Guardian: Post Singular
by warriorfist
Summary: When an unexpected situation leads to a startling discovery, veteran Avenger Tony Stark is forced to reconsider everything that he has learned about the Guardian in their midst. Who is Raine Zin? Where does he come from? What are his motives? The truth is out there. But how much can you really comprehend?
1. Prologue Pt I

**_A/N: This is a fresh start. I have ceased updating the other Guardian fic, once I realised that my earlier stories are too clunkered and full of flaws. This one, while following the narrative continuity from the previous fic, is mostly disconnected from earlier stories and is designed to be accessible to all. The idea is to have a tighter narrative and a better flow to the story._**

**_All you need to know about the titular character Raine Zin, is that he is a Guardian, part of a mysterious organisation that operates beyond the confines of the Marvel Universe. He has been sent to observe the MU and somehow he ended up being part of the Avengers. But just what has he been observing, and what does his organisation intend to do with it? It's these sort of questions which provide the narrative impetus for this particular story._**

**_The extract below is an exercise in providing background material, similar to the appendices of Lord of the Rings and the Enclycopaedia Galactica entries of the Foundation series. Similar extracts will appear over the course of this fic, meant to flesh out the world from which the Guardians originate and provide ground for future stories that I might write in the Guardian series._**

**_So you can skip it entirely if it feels too middling or confusing. The story is also designed to work as a stand-alone._**

**_Without further delay, here is the prologue. Enjoy!_**

* * *

_"…..For the economical sake of widespread comprehension, I shall attempt to approach this particular dilemma through allegorical usage of a well-known hominid myth. The particulars and details of the ancient tale are well known amongst this text's intended audience, and thus shall I restrain myself only to the relevant themes within the soon-to-be apocryphal context. _

_The myth comprises of two principal characters: a father and his son; but most of us tend to remember the latter for its lamentable folly. Armed with an ingenious invention, it dares to transcend its station and is struck down accordingly by the transgressed- in this case, the resident star. Compactly: it is the personification of hubris. The Aesop remains, to this lasting day- Beings must remain within the confines of their existing limits._

_Now let us entertain an alternate notion. We stand at the precipice of a new epoch. In situation akin to that of the previous individual of myth, our collective race now soars above the previous median of 2nd level sentience. Our function has already been radically altered. The Pyramid of Needs has become obsolete. All that remains is for our form to be carried to its logical conclusion. The natural system is about to become entirely subsidiary. We ourselves will construct a self-sufficient system that can function indefinitely and perform in a superior capacity than that which has been prepared for us from before our birth. _

_Until now, we have gained our unique abilities from proximity of yellow luminals. Afterwards, they shall become inconsequential to our continued existence. In that vein, therefore, will we not, in a sense, become grander, and mightier than these celestial bodies? Will we not become more deserving of praise, for we are to achieve this status through a history of concentrated efforts; the sum total of our brilliant minds; while those balls of fused hydrogen and helium do not even function of their own volition? Are we then, not they, deserving of their ancient names- Helios? Will we not become Helians unto ourselves? _

_I understand that in this plea I have made a reference to another well-known Hominid text, far more recent than the one I quoted previously, but relatively ancient nonetheless. But, I digress._

_The concept of hubris fails to apply in this case. We have been afraid of the unknown for far too long. We have entrusted our fates to the cosmic winds for countless celestial cycles; in return, twice have we been divested from our natural homes. In this new land that we all share with like-minded refugees from countless species, there is unanimous agreement in the favor of forging a new future of our own accord. _

_The Great Event, long debated, is now inevitable. We must embrace it. We will cast off all our affiliations in regards to our former home. We must construct a new, unique identity that will survive the storms of time._

_The question remains: what are we leaving behind? A fierce nostalgia, born out of the terrible oppressors that are inertia and myopia, grips some of our minds in regards to this dilemma. In truth, the definitive answer cannot be known until we have crossed the threshold. There is no question that a profound sense of disorientation and identity crisis of a multifarious nature is likely to follow the change. How will we be truly affected? I leave that matter to be dealt with by future incarnations. _

_Perhaps, I myself shall take upon the unenviable task to describe such phenomenon at a later occasion….."_

_End of Excerpt. _

_You have been reading: _

The Helian Manifesto (-2298 O.R.) _by Daed-Lus. (-2300 O.R. to -2282 O.R.) _

_First-Generation Helian; Historian, Philosopher, Geneticist. Founding-Consul of the First Republic of Lumens. _

_The previous text can also be found in the following **one **result:_

A Brief History of Our Lamentation (-2281 O.R.), _also by Daed-Lus._

_Source adapted for Tier-2 Cognition, by W1T-b12, Runtime Module T302. English Translation by T1N -e02, Runtime Module T201. Copyright: The __Preserver Compendium. _

* * *

**Prologue: Into the Rabbit Hole**

* * *

Cassie Lang stared across the void through a transparent window made of an unknown material (she was sure it wasn't some kind of glass). A frustrating sight greeted her beyond it; a vast expanse of a highly viscose liquid, full of noticeable chunks of soluble particles which she guessed was some sort of salt. (She was good at Chemistry, she had been told.)

By itself, the liquid was colorless, Jonas had told her, but the pinkish-red colour of the spongy matter underneath lent its sheen to this unusual sea through the process of diffusion. He went into a lengthy exposition afterwards about the probable equilibrium required for organisms such as them to even exist in such a mismatched environment. She could only fetch out the words 'Pym Particles' amongst the rest of the irretrievable mess that consisted his technobabble. Beyond that, she did not care to remember; most of that had gone entirely over her head. She hated it when Jonas showed off his smarts at her expense.

The adrenaline had yet to fade, and she was quivering with anticipation at the thought of exploring this strange new world. After the rollercoaster ride that had taken her through a great diversity of landscapes, the sight currently before her did seem a little tame by comparison; but it still beat being stuck in double period History 101 instead. The rest of the team would have loved this. But she didn't mind; she was part of an expedition team unlike any other.

Uncle Hank was there, and naturally, his friend Bill Foster had tagged along as well. Of course, she was less thrilled with the presence of Eric O'Grady; even though she had hardly met the man, she knew of his lecherous tendencies well enough. He had quite the reputation amongst the closely-knit superhuman community. Thankfully, he hadn't much in that vein to justify his dubious fame to her…yet. (The fact that she was underage may have something to do with that matter, she reckoned.)

Tony Stark himself was at the helm of this strange craft- one of his own designs, he had professed. A sleek new suit of armor coated his figure. He was all business, even more than usual, it seemed. Iron man had never seemed more calm and in-control; at least, not to her.

She herself had gotten a temporary costume change, as it were- every 'size changer' amongst them were adorned in aerodynamically designed, Teflon-sleek full body suits, their aesthetic designs reminiscent to the Ant-man costumes that have evolved over the years. Naturally, the accompanying headgears bore more than a passing resemblance to the iconic Ant-man helmet, as well.

That was Uncle Hank for you- he was sweet and considerate, but he had an innate urge to post his stamp on all things he constructed.

She loved this. This was awesome to the nth degree. (And also, it was without imminent mortal danger, as far as she knew. That helped considerably, too.)

Her high hopes dampened somewhat when a single bittersweet thought wandered into her synapses.

_Dad would have loved this._

No. She didn't dare sink into a slump at this juncture. Her dad would have wanted her to make the best of the situation, not mope endlessly over lost opportunities. This, at least, she owed to his memory.

Presently, the constant whiz of the engine faded into silence. Only the dim, almost sub-sonic buzz of the liquid remained, as it splashed against the metalwork of the odd, semi-cylindrical vessel.

It was time.

"So…" Cassie said, grinning like a giddy idiot as she got up from her seat, "Are we there yet?"

Iron man peered over his shoulders, while he continued to do some last-minute diagnostics as the vessel finished its deceleration.

"Yes. Yes, we are," He replied, his voice filter managing to obscure any evidence of emotion to be found in the statement.

The rest of them were standing close; Drs. Foster and Pym were carrying on with a brief, idiosyncratic conversation pertaining to matters only discernible to biophysicists with multiple PhDs.

Eric O'Grady, the perennial outsider (and very much out of his depth in present company) had only just managed to come to grips with the lamentable lack of attractive members of the opposite sex. (He couldn't hit on Underage girls- after all he had an image to maintain! The PR would be disastrous.)

Nevertheless, the Avengers had gone through the bother of calling _him _up for this job. He wasn't going to waste the opportunity; it would look rather good on his resume for future work, wouldn't it?

"Alright, most of us have gone over this already…" Iron man stated as he got up from the driver's seat, heading towards the assorted individuals, "but for the sake of unified clarity, here is how it stands. This is, literally, a matter of life and death. We all know what's at stake, so there is no point in repeating that. Now as for our mission…"

The crimson chest-plate of the Avenger heaved a little, and then it retreated a bit from the edges revealing a complex, nigh-incomprehensible structure of minute machinery underneath. Blue beams emanated from these gaps, immediately forming a unified, three-dimensional hologram image. It showed a map, if it could be called that, of their immediate surroundings.

The image, in question, was something she should be quite familiar with, Cassie reasoned, but still it carried with it an aura of mystery and innate wonder. And for this, Cassie felt a guilt which she couldn't quite place as to its origins. This made her profoundly uncomfortable, if only briefly.

"Now, we made our entry from here..." Iron man pointed to an opening, and then moved his ring finger through the subsequent tract as he retraced the path they had traveled so far. A yellow dotted line followed his fingers as he did so. "Of course, we passed the cerebrospinal-plasmid barrier without many difficulties…"

Soon, he settled to the point they currently were, and it was surprisingly far-off (in relative terms) from where they had started.

"And now, here we are. The insertion has been successful so far. But the hardest part still lies ahead. As predicted, the submersible cannot go any further without causing massive structural damage to our…environment. Bill, you have the lion's share in terms of total area to be explored. Also, since you are the one with the most ready access to the other three areas, you also serve the purpose of back-up in case of an emergency."

This time, the route plotted itself, a fine thread of purple indicating the optimal trajectory to the destination. Two more threads, one yellow and one red, appeared simultaneously, twisting and turning their way to their respective targets. Curiously, the yellow thread (which Cassie presumed was Uncle Hank's) followed the purple one's lead for quite the time, before taking an unexpected detour and staying there.

"Hank, meanwhile, has not only the smallest, but also probably the trickiest, destination on his hands. Eric…you get middle-ground. But it's nonetheless trickier than anything else you have likely pulled off so far."

"Oh, I wouldn't bet on that, sir," O'Grady replied with just the barest hint of cheek.

"Oh, I would," Iron man deadpanned. "Take it from me- I have read your debriefs, both official and otherwise. From what Maria Hill has sent me so far- and also, from what I have gleaned from…personal research, you are not half-bad when it comes to stealth and infiltration. But that's not what it is, in this case. And you don't have the advantage of any reliable intel in this case, too."

"Alright, Dad," O'Grady replied hastily. "You certainly knew what you were gonna get when you called me up…but still, yeah I will be careful. Satisfied?"

"Just enough," Iron man returned to the matter at hand. An extra green thread appeared on the hologram, and it made its way to the last destination. "Cassie-"

"Why's my one green? It doesn't fit me. At All!" Cassie pouted in indignation.

"I ran out of all relevant colors when I thought your one up," Iron man confessed in earnest. "And Green's a good color. Jonas is more or less green isn't he?"

From behind the Avenger's figure, Jonas was monitoring the diagnostics in his stead.

He also happened to be a tall green-skinned android who went by the moniker of Vision, which was a homage to his predecessor. (Also, he is Cassie's boyfriend. Don't ask! She is very tired of fending questions on the matter by now.)

He smiled impishly at her when Iron man mentioned his name, causing her to flush to an even greater degree of red than his own crimson facial features.

"Well," Cassie could have sworn she heard a muffled smirk as he paused for a moment. "Moving on. As you can remember from the briefing, you will be the one most isolated from your team due to your target's remote location. Regardless, I will be in constant communication with you- and everyone else- for the entire team, so anytime you feel the need-"

"I can take care of myself just fine. I hardly need the kiddie gloves, you know."

"Yes, I know. I also know that you are a minor, even if one who is unnecessarily stubborn, mildly foolhardy and extremely brave," Cassie gushed at the semi-compliment. "And I also have to be aware of the fact that your mother and her husband the disgruntled cop can sue me and Hank for reckless endangerment in case something does happen to you. You understand my predicament, of course."

"I also understand that you are insanely rich and have enough money to buy all of New York ten times over."

"Not as much, no. Maybe three times at most, but ten is really pushing it," This time, Cassie was definitely sure that Iron man was grinning like the smug idiot he was underneath the intimidating, impersonal visor. "But anyways, it's the thought that counts. Also, I have an image to maintain. But that's enough about it, right?" He looked at the adults, who nodded in agreement. Hank seemed mighty pleased with the little verbal sparring between friend and god-daughter; almost too pleased, in fact.

"Alright. You know what to do. Take your positions by the pods…" Cassie eyed the small, oddly-structured miniature vehicles. They looked almost retro-futuristic; spiritual successors to the Sputnik, she noted amusedly. "The launch will begin shortly. A lot of people our counting on us, so let's do our best not to disappoint them. Good luck."

They shook hands afterwards, and Cassie found this somewhat morbid, if solely for the fact that this was hardly going to be their last goodbyes. (She certainly hoped it wasn't. It would be very inconvenient if she died in the middle of nowhere, for sure.)

She and Jonas gave each other meaningful glances- in teenage speak, this translated to "Don't worry about me, I will be alright. I will be there for you," And so on and so forth.

The pod doors opened, and the team took their seats. They had seemed unnecessarily cramped to Cassie during the various drills, and nothing had changed in the meantime for Cassie to reverse her opinion. Regardless, she would manage, as she was sure the others would do. She clamped on her helmet, and quickly got accustomed to the unnatural hum that now emanated constantly from it. (It had something to do with quantum entanglement this or that, Jonas had told her. She didn't want to worry her pretty head about it- she was a Freshman and had a full three years before she needed to understand Particle Physics after all. (Also, did she ever mention how she hated Jonas being a show-off?)

She waited with bated breath.

"Three…Two…One. Clear."

There was no audible explosion of sound to herald the start of the engines. Cassie only felt a sudden increase in downward pressure as her pod flushed down the bay, the interior view of the mother vessel quickly fading from view.

"Pods have successfully launched. This is a communications check. Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta. Can everyone hear me correctly?"

"Yes" Cassie said. She heard the other three affirmatives on the communications channel shortly after.

"Good, good. As you all remember, the first portion of this particular journey will be automatically charted by your pods' onboard processors until you reach your destination. For this duration, radio silence will be maintained unless in absolute emergency, in order to limit any decay to our current habitat due to excess electromagnetic radiation. Godspeed, ladies and gentlemen."

The others replied with similar platitudes. Cassie found herself mumbling something in similar vein, before the silence completely engulfed her thought processes. Which was all good and well, because this would take some getting used to.

The utter quietness was disconcerting to someone who was used to the constant chatter of daily life in the Information Age. What little light was there was constantly becoming less and less, or so it seemed to her eyes. She (along with her pod) was shrinking and shrinking, until the wrinkles of the surface beneath this intimidating sea widened into vast chasms of darkness. The pod accelerated, and then dived into one such abyss. The shrinking stopped as abruptly as it had begun; and soon she had nothing to see but her own reflection due to the pod's inner lighting.

She had nothing to hear but her own quiet, strained breathing and the heaving of her heart; nothing to smell but the remnants of the two-dollar perfume she had sprayed on in the morning.

Nothing to taste, but her own stingy saliva (the food wouldn't survive being shrunk to such miniscule degrees); nothing to touch but the cold, metallic controls at her fingertips. And the narrow window above, which she pressed against longingly.

To put it bluntly, this was nothing short of mind-numbing. And the journey had barely started.

* * *

Data swam in front of the watchful eyes of Tony Stark, manifest in myriads of forms across the seven screens which constituted the deck display of the Nu-Argo. The semantics were infinite, and they sought to assault him at various turns. Fortunately, the truths they told were often infinitely lesser in number and easy to discern; or they normally were as long as he followed the always useful Lex Parsimoniae- one of the two constituents of the heuristic law known most popularly as the Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is almost always the correct one.

This most effective tool, however, was recently starting to fail him with startling frequency. The main purpose of it, after all, is deliver the user from point A to Point B through a straight line, the shortest distance possible to reach said conclusion. Trouble is, for Tony Stark, lately everything was becoming decidedly non-linear.

The most surefire way to put a futurist into a loop was to confront him with his most ardent desire.

The future, without a doubt, was here. Like everyone else, Tony was ill-prepared to meet it.

It had been two weeks since he had undergone the Extremis process. The excitement had subsided- the apprehension, however, yet remained. Extremis was the breakthrough; now what came next? There were mind-boggling varieties of equally plausible routes all laid around him- and he didn't know which one to choose.

"You seem concerned, Mr. Stark," Vision chipped in placidly, "You can rest for a while, if you want. I have got this in control, rest assured."

"It's not fatigue," Tony replied.

Physically, he was healthy- nowadays, he scarcely needed medical monitors to corroborate on that fact. He could smell (even see, if he squinted quite hard) the healthy dose of CO2 being exhaled from his nostrils. He could hear his enhanced heart beat 47 times per minute. His visual acuity was top-notch. His reaction time was leaps and bounds above any normal human male of his age.

Physically, he had never been better.

"Never mind. So...Jonas. Heh. You know, he used to call himself something like that, too. He went by Victor Shade."

"You mean, the original Vision?"

"Yes, Yes. I almost keep forgetting that you don't have his memory banks," Tony chuckled mildly, "How's it feel knowing that you have a little bit of Kang in you, then?"

"An alternate version of Kang, sir. One who was actively trying to prevent the atrocities of his elder selves, actually," Vision finished, more than a touch of vehemence noticeable in his conviction.

"Very well, mistake conceded. Now, don't mind me- but you seem a tad bit more reactionary than your previous namesake, Jonas. I say this as a good thing, mind you," Tony added, almost as an afterthought.

"Alright, sir. I will take it as a compliment, then," Jonas wasn't entirely convinced, but decided not to pursue this thread of conversation any further.

And neither did Tony. Both returned to the comfort of the quietness. Supergenius android or not, Jonas was not keen on perusing the philosophical debate concerning the tricky dichotomy of Free Will vs Determinism. His personality, of course, was modelled on the neuron pathways of a teenager; consequently he could care less for matters of the epistemological plane.

Internally, Tony remarked about a silly thing: the Vision had become considerably more human in temperament, while Tony Stark was headed down the reverse route at the moment. For greater context, he decided to replay, in his mind, a certain conversation he had with an esteemed colleague a few days back. Perfect Memory Recall was one of the milder benefits he enjoyed thanks to Extremis, actually.

"_Enjoyed the apple juice, child?" Sal Kennedy inquired in usual half-leering, half-jovial manner._

_"It still tastes like hell, reconfigured taste buds or not," Tony replied. He was of the strong suspicion that Sal had mixed more than just homegrown apples in the diabolical brew._

_"Well, I would say that one should not be knee-jerk dismissive of eccentric flavors, Tony...Caviar didn't taste all fine and dandy either the first time you tried it, was it?" Sal had switched to his Zen master mode._

_"No, it did not," Tony did not appreciate the unease at being reminded of that most hated of his afflictions._

_"Hmm. So what comes next, lad?"_

_"As in?"_

_"Extremis, Tony. Yes, it elevated your repair centers to unprecented levels of biological efficiency. Light-speed interface with your suit of armor, unlimited remote access to satellites, WMDs, home appliances, so and so forth. _

_"So, right now you are...what, functionally immortal? Frankly, what are you going to do with it? Continue to play superhero until somebody supercedes your specs- and mind you, that is going to happen someday- and murder you in Times Square?_

_"And now, you can talk to machines. Yes, information retrieval, synchronisation, etc. becomes a helluva lot easier. But what of it? You have been handed the ball, Tony. What are you going to do with it?"_

_"Easy, Sal. It took Maya Hansen more than a decade to come up with current-gen Extremis. The goal was only ever...biological efficiency, as you put it. Besides, I hardly planned on getting injected with the process before hand, you know."_

_"Well, the applications are what make the product, Tony. Maya, bless her tortured soul, never had your raw engineering intellect at any rate. You have the Machiavellian savviness of Edison as well as the crazy potential of Tesla, my friend! Besides, Maya's end-goal was curing cancer. At your hands, that only has to be a minor checkpoint. Why stop there, at all?_

_"Extremis, in and of itself, is a marvelous thing, I agree. But it was only ever going to be a prototype. In relative terms, it's simply a stone axe at this point. Can't you see where this can lead you, my child?"_

_"Well...I can guess," Tony knew only too well of Sal's Transhumanist slant._

_"You can rebuild the human being from scratch! Before you go calling me an absurdist fool, you damn know that it's entirely possible. With people like you and the McCoys, Pyms and Richardses of the world, it can become a concrete reality in a few short years. Tell me, is the mandatory need to shit and piss an essential part of human nature? What exactly makes us human? The organic structure of our body?"_

_"Among other things. It's dangerous to play God, at this level at least," Tony replied curtly._

_"Heh. Well would you call people who use prosthetics inhuman, Tony? Cochlear implants, Pacemakers. These are all tools, just as Extremis is. Why not use it to remake our- let's face it- eminently crappy design into something infinitely better?"_

_"Well, for the sake of argument, what would you actually propose?" Tony knew better than to confront Sal directly when he was on such a roll._

_"Well for starters, the human brain. It barely limps along with exaflop/exabyte processing power, right? Now imagine...your brainpower not being concentrated in one spongy lump of flesh, but actually spread over the entire breadth of your body. Think of it! _

_"Each of the approximate ten octillion atoms in the human body being altered to possess alternatable, perfectly functionable copies of your brain; imagine that they all work together, in a hyper-advanced neuro-commune. They will possess a collective processing power of...what, quakkaflop/quakkabytes?"_

_"Quakka? What does that mean?" Tony couldn't prevent that chuckle from escaping his contorted lips._

_"10 to the power forty-eighth."_

_"You just made that up, Sal."_

_"The point is, that theory is actually a lot closer to reality than the realm of science fiction than many would like to believe, even with our pedestrian technological routes. I am not even taking into account the kind of fantastic stuff Richards probably hoards from Galactus' cookie cupboard, or the like."_

_"Alright, say I take your hypothesis- which is all it is, actually- at face value. What would I, or anyone else, do with that much computing power, Sal? Can our fragile psyches be even trained to handle that kind of substantial culture shock?"_

_"Someone has to throw the first stone to figure that out. If not us, then who? If not now, then when?"_

_"Sal, Sal, Sal," Tony sighed. "Look, we have danced this dance before. Why don't..." Tony stopped short._

_"I need to leave," he said abruptly. "There's a metahuman situation in Connecticut. Someone's using a stolen Dynamo armor. Or it could just be Russia's way of having plausible deniability. You know how tricky these things can get."_

_"Indeed, then," Sal stood up; they were already in the veranda. Tony's two-piece suit had been replaced by the golden-undersheath of the current Iron man armor. "You can't run forever, you know."_

_"Yeah. It was good talking to you, Sal. We should do this again some time," Tony remembered to be courteous enough to step into the lawn before the ensemble parts of the armor fused around his figure; he blasted off without another word._

That was three weeks ago. The underlying unease that had delineated his posture became all the more apparent in this recounting due to the fact that he had relived it all in the space of a pico-second. He had half a mind to forcibly excite his hypothalamus to secrete endorphins* in order to wipe away the distaste- but then he realised the irony.

A singular ping sounded from the deck interface. Tony had more than an inkling as to what its portent were likely to be. A brief peek into the contents of on-board rig's RAM- for that was quite faster than his visual coordination- verified his estimation.

"Okay. That's the notification of the last pod reaching its initial checkpoint...Communications are a go once again. So, lady and gentlemen, I hope you can hear me?"

Four different affirmatives came back in reply.

"Great. As of this moment, Golden Fleece is in its third and final stage. It's all up to you now, guys."

That was true in more ways than one.

* * *

_*Endorphins are natural chemicals found in the brain which influence a variety of emotions, such as fear, anxiety, pain, happiness, etc._


	2. Prologue Pt II

Hank Pym felt fidgety. Breathless. It had been too long since he had done something like this.

Even at this size, the surrounding area around his craft seemed exceedingly cramped. He remembered the usual comparison for the generalised shape- a seahorse. He leant closer to the window, peering above at the dark surface barely illuminated by the front-lights of the pod.

He could barely make out the curvature; an ant can hardly grasp the fact of its meta-dimensions from sheer visualisation. Innumerable, intricately layered strands spread out across the landscape, branches connecting to the bodies of reed-thin, dendritic trees. Electric pulses travelled through them seamlessly at light-speed- white fireflies buzzing through never-ending routes.

He laughed, mostly to himself. It sure didn't look like a seahorse from there. Having such a skewed perspective will do that to you, he supposed.

"_Enjoying yourself, Hank?" Bill Foster's voice came in through the helmet. "Myself, I probably drew the short-end of the stick. Whole lotta work and not much to enjoy."_

_"_Well, Bill, you always were the more honest worker out of us two," Hank replied, "Besides, we are hardly here for sightseeing. How are things on your end, Cassie?"

"_Umm. Can I get back to you on that later?...Whoa. Wordless, anyone?"_

"It's brilliant, isn't it?" Hank ruminated. "We talk so much of the macro-scale- the cosmos, the universe, m-theory- but at the same time there's still so much left unexplored in the micro-scale. To quote Richard Feynman, there's _plenty_ of room at the bottom."

"_Amen to that."_

"Alright. Eric, you are unusually quiet. Something wrong?"

"_Not really. It's just...can we focus on the work, lads? I am not a weirdophile like all of you are, see."_

"Fair enough, then. Let's move on, folks."

Eric was right. Time was of the essence. The pod fuel wasn't going to last forever. And there was no telling just how much their long-term presence may adversely affect the environment.

He pressed a last few buttons near the right ear, bringing up the HUD with its multiple windows of on-the-fly statistical data.

He took a moment to ensure that the rope-line was properly hooked to his belt-buckle.

The door slid open, responding perfectly to the commands issued from the helmet. The fluid briefly flooded the compartment as he swam out; it was flushed quickly as the door closed and the vacuum was restored.

He turned his gaze towards what lay in front of him. Tony wasn't kidding when he said that this was going to be tricky.

That was good; tricky was right up his alley. He made a living out of that, after all.

* * *

Fourty-eight minutes later, Hank spirits were in a lower state. They had done a lot of the grunt-work, and charted much of the broader areas. It wasn't that they had zero results- to the contrary, they had substantial validation of earlier guesswork, and most of it couldn't have been done without this ingenious undertaking. But even then, all that had been verified were merely symptoms, and the cause remained ever elusive.

"_Alright..," Tony was being pragmatic now, Hank could sense. "We should stop here for the time being. This was never going to bring in instantaneous conclusions. All units, return to the Nu-Argo. With the extensive documentation we have made so far, there is bound to be something useful buried within the raw data. Frankly, that's all we could ever hope for."_

_"Geez...you make it sound so depressing," Cassie lamented. "All this legwork for...even more brainstorming? Bummer."_

_"Rome was never built in a day, kid."_

"No," Hank spoke up, suddenly. "There's something here that's more...substantial. I can feel it. You guys go up, I will stay around for a couple of minutes."

In truth, what Hank had was the faintest trace of an instinct. Then again, when it came to inventions and discoveries, that's all he had operated on for the last couple of years.

Right now, it pointed him straight at the tiny (even relative to him!) sentinels spread around him in disparate formations, as far as the eye could see.

Nanites. They were like iridiscent beetles, a green pseudo bio-luminescence softly radiating off their anthropodic figures as they floated perfectly still, exerting just the right amount of force in just the right angles so that the viscous drag of the fluid was completely negated.

Pym and the rest of the explorers had found shortly after they had left their pods. They were spread out all over the greater biological area. Upon discovery, their presence did not seem unwelcome- rather they had been expected. But now, they presented a font of minor annoyance, since they were chiefly interested in keeping silent vigil and remain rooted to their spots.

_"Alright, Hank," Tony conceded after much internal thought. He was only ever going to allow it because the man in question was Hank Pym; and everyone knew that Hank Pym needed his creative space to pull off a brilliant stunt every once in a while. "You get five minutes. After that I am going to get in there and drag you back myself, you know."_

"Yeah, good luck on that. Anyways, less on the radio chit-chat, Tony, remember? Meet you top-side in five."

Hank waded towards the nearest nanite, replaying all the possible points of connections back in his head. The problem, or at least part of it, had to originate from here- that much was certain.

The data confirmed it; there was no possible sign of neurogenesis whatsoever in the region. This was mighty strange, indeed, since this was where the proliferation occurred at the most noticeable rate.

Even at the very least, the rate should be a 1000 per day- that meant approximately 41 per hour. Nothing resembling that could be witnessed here.

"You know what's wrong, don't you?" Hank whispered to the indifferent nanite, "Sooner or later, you are going to tell me all about it."

For the next two minutes, he ran the usual gamut of test-transmissions he kept prepared for communications with such entities. Like before, they failed to incite any noticeable response. For good measure, he even crafted a cruder form of the SETI message and directed it towards the creature. Again, no effect, whatsoever.

This was frustrating Hank to no end. Something had to give.

This was supposed to be easy for him. He was a pioneer in robotics. He knew machines, he knew how they should work, they should interact, how...

Fool! Of course, he knew machines. By rule of thumb, machines will never go the mind-bogglingly complex route when a simpler alternative was at hand (Ultron excluded, of course).

Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

There had to be a simple thread connecting these nanites to their environment. Consequently, he ran down a list of all the current features he could think of that just might be pertinent. It took him an entire minute and a half before he decided on trying the theta-wave frequency range that's activated during REM sleep.

"Here's goes nothing," Hank held his breath, before relaying the commands to his helmet to switch communications to the required frequency.

It was as though something else had suddenly invaded the very private space of his mind. Not just something else, a billion, billion something elses. To his surprise, it was not overwhelming, like the waves of a wrathful tsunami, but gentle and soothing, like the calm breeze.

He had hit jackpot. He had to strongly resist the temptation to scream in triumph.

They were talking, in a language he could not make any head or tail of whatsoever. It was unlike any machine code he had ever seen or heard of. But he understood enough. They were in connected in some sort of hybrid network topology, partially-mesh and partially-star type.

This was highly reminiscent of Drexler's bottom-up molecular factory structure. Had his dreams been truly realised? There were so many questions, so many answers Hank had to know.

But he had to focus on the most important ones, first of all. Every now and then, the nanites conferred with something infinitely smaller than even them. These were spread out at irregular intervals of space, and it would take him quite a bit of time and effort to work out a plausible pattern for it. There would be time for it later.

Where were they exactly situated? Just how small could they be? He was prepared to know firsthand. He checked the highly tensile rope fastened to his hip- it was made of unstable molecules, of course, so there was no worry about length or breaking stress. He could safely follow it back to the pod in case of any emergency.

"_Your time's up, Hank. Stop being stubborn and come up, will you?" Tony reasoned._

"Look, Tony, I have found something. I will tell you more about it once I get there...but it's big. This will take only just a minute."

He activated the Pym Particles immediately afterward, the ever-familiar buzz reverberating through his body as he shrunk to increasingly minute levels; and he dove downwards, deeper and deeper, into the rabbit hole.

Janet should have been here. She would have loved it.

* * *

It had been a great deal more than a minute. Hank Pym had yet to return.

And Tony Stark was starting to get restless.

"This is a tad bit childish. A bit too much, even for him," he remarked darkly, not caring for the noticeable frown that had appeared on Jonas' face.

"Well, the others have yet to reach the Nu-Argo as well, sir, so at least we can afford to wait." the android pointed out astutely.

"That's not the point. Something's...wrong. He has quiet for too long. Jonas, please do a communications check for me, will you?"

"If only to alleviate your concerns, yes," Jonas proceeded to input the necessary commands. His frown returned, slanted to worrying degree.

"That's strange. Alpha unit's gear is not responding to the ping."

Tony rapidly switched to the public communications channel in his armor.

"Hmm. Cassie, would you try to contact your uncle Hank for me, dear? Just a comms check," Tony asked with tipped courtesy, the sense of urgency absent in his request.

"_Yeah, sure. Hang on a sec...Oh Great. Is this thing broke? It's showing a connection error on the display. So much for durability, I guess."_

"Alright. You can get the helmet checked out when you get here, Cassie...thanks for the help," Tony finished hastily.

By then, his heart was pounding at a rate which would have sent his previous un-enhanced self straight into cardiac arrest. As it was, his new repair system reflexively reacted to the elevated stress levels by releasing a complex concoction of neurotransmitters which provided a regulatory, calming effect.

That was well and good; he needed to be in control for executing the following maneuvers.

"Look, Jonas. You know as well as I do, that quantumly-entangled Ant-Men helmets experiencing synchronisation failure is very bad news. I will notify Bill about this immediately, he is nearest to Hank's last known operation. We are going to mount a search and rescue operation as quickly and quiet as poss..."

Tony had stopped short. He didn't know why he did.

For the faintest moment, he had felt as though reality had experienced a cross-connection.

Then it happened again.

It persisted; the sensors, both those of the Nu-Argo and those inside his own armor, went haywire, indicating minute spatial shifts in the greater environment that violated more and more laws of multiple branches of Physics by the passing second.

Vision had reacted instantaneously; he pored over all the new data, trying to crunch the confusing correlations into new, identifiable patterns. All efforts so far, proved fruitless.

Tony Stark peeked beyond the small window to the right of the deck display. Below the Nu-Argo, the previously normal frontal lobe was starting to undergo some sort of transmutation. It was a completely random process, and it did not seem local to just the cerebellum, at all.

"Good Lord."

This was something...new. He had no pre-planned hypothesis to suggest its form or function at his call.

That wasn't what he was chiefly concerned about, however. Vision vocalised his fears before he needed to.

"We are trapped. We need to evacuate, immediately. The Nu-Argo can be easily accelerated to the required speeds for us to-"

"You are not thinking clearly, Jonas," Tony was already inputting the commands to open the emergency hatch. "This is living brain tissue. You are going to skewer our subject's consciousness if you go about zipping that way. Besides, there's no possible trajectory to ensure maximum survival."

"Then what do you suggest that we do?" Jonas was frantic, and it was taking all the self-restraint that he had not to simply dive into the void in search of Cassie.

"Wait here, try to keep the Nu-Argo's vectors as constant as possible while I go find Hank. We are in the dark, and I am going out on a limb, but I am asking you to trust me, okay? I have something. It may just work."

He flushed down the hatch and blasted off immediately, leaving no chance for Jonas to reply.

It did not matter; Jonas knew that Tony Stark was right. Against something so unexplainable, a shot in the dark was all they had.

* * *

To be fair, maybe when this was all said and done, in retrospect the entire thing may not turn out to be been half as bad as some of the other wringers Tony had been put through.

The present was hardly time for such measuring- the Iron-man armor was maneuvering like it had done never before, its thought-based interface performing at full capacity while a disproportionate pandemonium was unfolding before its wearer's eyes.

Microbe colonies were in mass evacuation, their minute life-spans meaning that they were all the more aware of the dangers posed by this impromptu change. Neurons overhead were flashing like billboards on time-square, axons vibrating dangerously with great frequency. There were flashes of the most absurd things that appeared every now and then, persisting for a frustrating nanosecond before disappearing abruptly.

He couldn't afford to dwell on the conundrums for an iota of a moment- he was multi-tasking to the nth degree. He maintained a constant contact with Vision, just in case he came up with any viable pattern that would suggest an authentic rate of change. The suit was homing in on the telemetry of the Alpha pod like a guidance missile. And now he needed to verbally contact Bill- which would cost crucial seconds, if not minutes- but it was integral to the gamble he was going to take.

"Bill, everything alright there? Tell me what you are seeing_."_

_"Well...same old same old, unless you want me to describe the scenery."_

The change was a lot more disproportionate than he had previously thought, Tony reflected.

"Alright. So, it's not there yet. Bill, you are familiar with Reed's stack-transposition system? You know, the one that uses his n-decimal three-dimensional co-ordinates?"

"_Yeah, Reed let me use that once for...wait, what's not here yet?"_

"Can't tell. Not enough time. We are getting out of here, Bill. We are going to use that stack-transposition, and you are going to feed me the scale adjusted coordinates of the Nu-Argo and every pod except Hank's, real-time."

"_Jesus. It's that bad?"_

"Trust me, we don't want to wait around to find out. You guys need to stop your pods, Bill. For the steady vectors. Inform the others, will you- one conversation's about all I can manage right now."

Tony found his perception momentarily thrown off-balance as the doused Pym Particles activated, his armor making the required course deviations as he dived into the middle of the temporal lobe. Not that much distance to cover before he would reach Hank's pod.

"_But Tony, Reed's not at the Baxter Building right now. He and the rest of the FF4 left on a trip to the high-dimensions a week ago."_

"Yeah. I am working around that right now. Those co-ordinates, Bill. Work on them."

Regular scale, back in Tony's Long Island headquarters, the Stealth Argonaut booted immediately upon remote contact.

As he synched with the suit's visual systems, he got a glimpse of the other four Argonauts before it launched down the metal suite he had installed in the lab for such occasions.

Tony informed the A.I. of the destination- and the prototype complied immediately, hitting Mach 2 in 0.78 seconds as its noiseless repulsors blazed high above the New York skyline.

"_Wait. Why are we stopping now, doc?" O'Grady was rightfully suspicious._

_"Routine check of the navigational systems, Eric. Stay put, this will take but a moment," Bill insisted._

Tony was in the hippocampus, now.

The hippocampus, of course, had the distinction of possessing the same name as the genus which consisted of the almost fifty species of seahorses. 15th century anatomist Julius Aranzi noted a clear likeness with the marine animal when studying this peculiar ridge running down the floor of the temporal horn.

Alternately, the term has also been attributed to the mythical Hippocamp monster, a literal cross between a normal horse and the hindquarters of a fish. Later still, had also been labelled as the hippopotamus- before Karl Budarch noted the error and rectified it (probably with tongue firmly in cheek) in 1829.

Here, the flashes were occurring with the most alarming frequency. An epileptic seizure at this juncture was not something Tony needed at all. He accordingly adjusted the length of the eye-slits on his visor to filter the light.

Tony braced himself. He was getting closer and closer to the point of origin.

Next stop: Dentate Gyrus.

"_Uncle Bill, is this going to take long?" Cassie pouted._

_"Well, it shouldn't," Bill was straining hard at converting the vectors into workable coordinates._

_"Why weren't we notified something like this might happen in one of them drills?" Eric pressed._

_"Well, this sort of thing tends to slip by every now and then. We always have to be mindful of unexpected delays," Bill reasoned. He had to delay an onset of panic until the very last moment._

_"I guess we are having a spell of faulty equipment," Cassie wondered out loud. "This isn't like Tony Stark, though. First that thing with the comms gear , now this navigation stuff..."_

_"Wait. What's that with comms?" Eric was doubly cautious._

_"Oh, there was this error while I tried to connect to Uncle Hank's headgear, on Iron-man's request. I thought my own gear must be glitching, but now it's working all fine, right? Weird."_

_"So, let me get this straight. Iron-man told you to contact Pym, and you couldn't do it? When did this happen?"_

_"Like a minute ago, at most?"_

_"It's nothing serious, I am sure," Bill assured._

_"I am not so convinced, doc," Eric muttered quietly._

The Stealth Argonaut was in the Baxter Building, rushing towards Reed's private labs; it had gotten in by exploiting that one-off blindspot that Tony had spotted a week earlier in H.E.R.B.I.E.'s current security layout.

Tony felt a tad bit unscrupulous going behind Reed's back in this manner- but he was sure the man would understand when he would explain the matter in detail.

The Argonaut was now in front of the user console of the ad-hoc transposition portal. It took a couple more seconds for it to breach through the rather pedestrian access blocks. Reed was never that great when it came to firewalls.

"Bill, I have access to Reed's system right now. You ready?"

"_Almost there. Hank's missing, isn't he?"_

"Yeah. I told him not to go poking around, but you know, that's Hank Pym. He triggered something, Bill. You probably can't feel it, but its washing all over the place like giant waves. It may be connected to the source of our subject's problem, but we can't let us get affected by whatever is happening around here. I am getting Hank out of here- you focus on the rest, alright?"

"_Right..."_

Tony had reached the pod- and as expected, Hank Pym was nowhere to be found. He looked around briefly. He spotted the cord before long. He set a variable marker on it, and the armor complied flawlessly.

He felt exceedingly strange. Everything was moving just the tenth of a picosecond slower. He wouldn't have even noticed it if not for Extremis. Something was distorting space-time; this kind of effect would normally be expected around highly dense matter and/or very large objects like, say, the Pyramids of Giza.

He didn't see any of those around here, though.

Sometimes, he hated being able to tell little details just like that. He felt better off without knowing. Ignorance is bliss, after all. Being a self-styled futurist, that made him feel like a hypocrite; but even now, Tony was too human.

_"Alright. The co-ordinates are done, Tony. The first one- 45.677X, 35. 4335Y, 467.544Z."_

The Argonaut inputted the numbers into the console. The portal deployed immediately. On cue, the blinking blip on the Amygdala faded out from the Nu-Argo's map window.

"_That's strange," Cassie noted. "Like something scratched the back of my mind. Shouldn't we be done by now, Uncle Bill?"_

_"Almost, Cassie. Almost," Bill switched over to Iron-man's private comms channel, "The next one: 45.5231X, 35. 0131Y, 467. 534Z."_

"Roger," Tony affirmed. The Argonaut fed the co-ordinates; it had to wait, though. The portal took a bit of time to recharge.

"_Strange. Now Ant-man isn't responding as well!" Cassie was starting to catch up. "This is just getting more and more weird."_

_"Yeah, well, Cassie, Eric's not here anymore," Bill thought that there was little point in doing the cloak and dagger bit any further at this point._

_"What do you mean? What's going on here?" Cassie had become a great deal more apprehensive._

_"We are getting out, Cassie. Tony will explain more later on. Brace yourself,"_

_"Wait, what? Just what-" Cassie found herself cut short as the portal opened and swallowed her up, pod and all._

Another blip, this one on the Thalamus, disappeared off the grid. Two out of four.

"Well, the job's half done," Tony commented dryly.

"_Yes. Cassie is probably screaming her head off as we speak, though. The next one- 45. 3123X, 35.2063Y, 467. 528Z."_

"That's for the Nu-Argo, right? I will hold on to that for now. I need Jonas around a while longer. Feed me the last one, Bill."

"_But I...ugh. Fine. 45. 2252X, 35.6631Y, 467. 558Z," Bill was understandably dejected._

"Thank You," Tony meant that. The Argonaut inputted the numbers for the Bravo pod.

"_Yeah. How do you know I didn't use reverse psychology and feed you the vessel's coordinates there?" Bill was joking of course._

"You can't lie to the machine, Bill. I would have known, I assure you."

"_Hmm. You get Hank and Viz out of there, you hear me? And if you end up dead, I will-" Bill could hardly follow up on the threat, as the portal promptly enveloped him the next moment._

The map refreshed; the last blip on the parietal lobe had been wiped off.

He had finally reached the trail's end. And it made no sense whatsoever. The cord disappeared into the middle of nothing. Tony attached some more probable derivatives to the variable marker, and hoped the armor would make some sense out of it.

The Dentate Gyrus, meanwhile, was busy trying to coax him into having the mother of all convulsions. The Nanites were emitting a hyper-frequency ultra sound, at what seemed to be their resonance pitch judging by their vibrations. It would melt even his brain in the space of three seconds. He consequently shut off his noise filters completely for the time being.

The armor notified him of the newly-sorted data, and presented him with the only plausible scenario that could apply to the situation. At any rate, it wasn't any less ridiculous than what's been happening until then.

"Jonas, how far could Hank shrink until he virtually disappears off the map?"

_"Well, there's always the Microverse. But that doesn't actually exist somewhere between the micro and nano scales, as once believed, but it is a separate dimension rather can be accessed by a layering of portals found in that size range."_

_"_Alright. So, is it possible, theoretically, for Hank to circumvent this layer and go even deeper?"

"_Theoretically, nothing can be entirely continuous...so yes, there must be gaps of vacuum that he could slip through. Those have to be very minute in size, though."_

"Hank's the expert on this, Jonas. If anyone can do it, it's him. I am sending you home, Jonas. I am going in after him."

_"I insist, sir, that I am more efficiently allocated here, since I can provide a great deal of much needed analytical support once you get down there."_

"Once I get down there, communications are very, very likely to be down. You would be a wasted asset, Jonas. Your portal's about to open up. Try to calm Cassie down before she wrecks my lab, alright?"

Before Jonas could get a word in edgewise, the communication link between him and Tony was abruptly severed. Tony supposed he should be relieved; to the contrary, he felt dubiously nervous. He had just withdrawn his last safety insurance.

He shut off his access to the Argonaut. He needed his entire concentration for this last trick.

The last set of calibrations was done. He hoped the delayed sequence of Pym Particle dosages were would work in perfect tandem with the clockwork maneuvers of the armor.

Without further delay, he went all in.

The armor accelerated further and further, in perfect vertical descent as the first wave of shrinking hit, turning the tiny Nanites into giant bugs of green, their light waves now enormously wide bridges of luminosity. The flashes, of course, were by now an acquired tolerance, and they hardly bothered him (as long as he didn't look too long). The earlier sluggishness he had experienced was now ten times more noticeable; gravitational acceleration was hardly giving him the entirety of the expected 9.81 metres per squared seconds of boost.

This time dilation also meant that his internal clock (enhanced though it maybe) was terribly off-base; so he couldn't rely on that, either.

When the second wave came, Tony's visual sensors stopped. He had expected this; visible light has a minimum wavelength of some 400 nanometers, with ultra-violet going further back to 300 nanometers.

As it were, Tony was literally in the dark. Forget Infrared- Tony had moved past that even earlier on, with thermal radiation having a wavelength of 1400 nm. The sheer minuteness of scale was mind-boggling: and it was only going to get exponentially worse. Tony made a point of starting a minor sub-routine that keep him informed of his scale, real-time.

The armor itself kept operating on the set range of derivatives on that cord marker, which seemed to go on and on. The armor, not about to be outdone, accelerated at an ever increasing rate, and he was sure that if this had been in normal scale, it would have broken several air speed records. Repulsors never ceased to amaze him.

The third wave of shrinkage commenced. Tony was keeping his eyes (metaphorically) on the counter. 200 picometers. That meant he had already passed the Microverse threshold. He congratulated himself, but then again, the entire credit technically go to his armor and its limited A.I.

The fourth wave hit. 40 picometers. He was smaller than a hydrogen atom.

That Hank would have the utter hubris to shrink to such degree without any precautions whatsoever terrified him to no end.

The fifth wave came. 20 attometers. He was reaching sub-atomic proportions.

Pym Particles shouldn't even be able to function at this short of scale. Perhaps, they would break down at any moment, leaving him at the mercy of regular laws of Physics- in which case he didn't have the faintest clue what would happen to him. Granted, he didn't have that in regards to the present situation, either.

The sixth and final wave hit. 300 zeptometers. Comparable to radius of neutrinos.

The armor deployed the ballasts, causing a jarring deceleration as it slowed down to rest.

It was well and good that none of his core sensors were working at this juncture, because if they did then he was sure that the resulting data would be beyond gibberish. Wherever he was, he was there a couple centuries early. Most smart men didn't understand quantum theory. In fact, Feynman had gone so far as to say that no one understands quantum theory.

Tony Stark was at the nadir of this highly unorthodox journey. He had no idea what to do next.

SONAR. That might work. He remembered something vague about phonons; he had been far more interested in the redhead sitting beside him in that seminar. But if they _could _transmit sound at the quantum level...well, he wouldn't hear it, of course. He only needed the sensors to detect those ultra-minute vibrations.

Now, if only the A.I. could calibrate the sensors to release such a hypothetical pulse.

To call the scheme half-baked would be a gross understatement. But he had to do something- anything.

He released the improvised ping, and waited. Incredibly, it returned quite shortly after. The results were refreshingly conclusive.

Tony suppressed a strong urge to laugh out loud. Hank Pym was in his arm's reach!

Sure enough, he extended one arm and soon found solid surface, the texture unmistakably that of the unique body suit. A few minutes of groping later, he had found one arm.

His ecstasy faded when he realised that Hank wasn't moving.

He couldn't dare to die on Tony after all the trouble the idiot made him go through!

He gripped the arm tightly, and commanded the armor to set course for the return trip.

"We are getting out of here, Hank. Just...huh? What's..."

Tony froze in horror. He had forgot to close the jury-rigged SONAR sub-routine. It told him of multiple Doppler red shifts. They were not alone.

Suddenly, he felt a crushing force of attraction being exerted on him. He realised that he was being bombarded with gravitons.

The armor struggled violently to launch toward its intended destination. But it made matters worse. Think of a man pulled by horses in all directions. There is a very good reason it was used a method of torture in the ancient times.

Three of his ribs were already broken. He held on to Hank, but it was getting harder than he could possibly imagine. The human body wasn't designed to withstand this sort of external pressure.

Extremis or not, he was going to die.

In one last act of desperation, Tony triggered a final wave of Pym Particles. This time, he grew. As did Hank.

The pain intensified a thousand fold. The greater the masses, the more the attraction. His heart had started to collapse. He couldn't hold that scream off any longer.

"AAARRGHHH!"

Extremis was hard at work at repairing the progressive damage, but if they didn't escape, it was only prolonging the inevitable. This time, it did indeed flood his body with a host of endorphins, and for that, Tony was grateful. He couldn't afford to pass out from the pain.

180 picometers. Degenerative neurons inside his brain were going on a rampage, inadvertently destroying all surrounding cells in blind fury and desperation.

900 nanometers. His lungs had been crushed. His body was running on pure momentum and adrenaline. Extremis had relegated itself to protecting those last few billion intact neurons holding together his fading consciousness.

With the remaining strength he had left, Tony closed his eyes.

Then, he opened them again.

A blinding flash of white light greeted him before he lost consciousness.

* * *

When Hank Pym woke up, he found himself staring into the eyes of St. Peter.

"Umm...so, I guess you are not going to let me enter there, are you?" Hank said after a bout of uncomfortable silence.

"Where do you mean?" St. Peter inquired.

"Well, into Heaven, of course. Virtuous pagans go into Limbo. Though, since being an atheist is probably something of a cardinal sin, I think I am going to a less charitable place, though."

"What are you talking about?" St. Peter was greatly perplexed.

"Well, here you are, St. Peter, guardsman of the Pearly Gates, and I am arguing semantics with you about my probable karmic placement, which is quite strange since I shouldn't be here, in the first place...but if God runs a bureaucracy, I suppose slip-ups such as this may be par for course."

St. Peter promptly slapped him with no small amount of force. Hank fell off the bed.

"Look, the medicine you were treated with is also a mild form of hallucinogen," the former St. Peter explained. Inexplicably, he had morphed into a tall, unkempt man, scraggy beard and all. He didn't appear to be a saint from any angle. "Since your physiology isn't native to this locale's herbs, I suppose the meds had a stronger effect than usual."

Hank got up from his bed and looked around. He was in a tent, of some sorts.

"Who are you? Where am I?" Hank asked, flustered.

"The name is Arcturus Rann. You probably won't recognise what we call this place, but I think your friend called it the Microverse."

"My friend?" Hank wondered.

"Yeah, your friend," Tony entered the tent, garbed in the same manner of alien garments worn by Arcturus Rann. He was grinning from ear to ear; Extremis had repaired the extensive damage throughout the better part of the day. "By the time I had found you, you had gone into anaphylactic shock, Hank. Myself, I was technically brain dead when I brought you here, actually. You are welcome, by the way."

"Yeah," Hank couldn't help but smile sheepishly at him, "Thanks for pulling my butt out of the fire, Tony," he added as they shook hands.

"Heh. You okay there? We wasted a lot of time in here while recuperating. We need to get back home."

"Yeah, you are right," Hank was pensive.

"Don't worry. I am not going to yell at you until we get there. We wouldn't want the others to miss that, now would we?" Tony chuckled, preparing to go over to discuss their travel options with Rann.

"Yeah...but, Tony? You know what was there, right?" Hank called out.

"No, Hank," Tony retorted harshly, "And neither did you. You know that."

"Yeah," Hank lowered his head, "but you know that, whatever it was, it was definitely the source of our problem, Tony."

Hank paused a little, before continuing on.

"Whatever was in there, it holds the truth behind what happened to Raine Zin."

Tony nodded solemnly in silence.

Whatever did, in fact, happen to Raine Zin?


	3. Crossing the Rubicon

_A/N: For revisiting readers who might be wondering, I have decided to finally split my issues after consistent feedback on the length of the uncut chapters. So what we are going with on this story (as with all my stories from now on forth) is that each issue will be divided into three Chapters (or Acts) and each of these chapters will be posted separately. This is meant purely for your reading pleasure and comfort. I would appreciate it very much if, upon finishing the three chapters of an issue, you consider them to be part of a singular product and see the connective tissue between them that brings out the thematic elements that I intended for my audience. The succeeding three chapters will be distinctly separate from the previous three chapters, while still furthering the plot and all other pertinent elements, and then the next three chapters will be different from these, and so on and so forth._

* * *

**_Issue 1: Deconstruction of a Lesser Mind_**

* * *

**_Chapter 1: Crossing the Rubicon_**

* * *

The Centurion paused, reining in his steed as they approached the reddish waters. He felt like a Hebrew pilgrim, standing at the gates of the Holy Land. As a military man, he couldn't help but appreciate the significance of this narrow stream: it just had so much history. But it was only known for that one infamous event, now. It had been that way for the last couple of hundred years.

He stepped off, leading his horse by the reins. But to his chagrin, the horse declined, neighing loudly and twisting and turning away from the coast. After a while, it gave way and lowered itself to the ground, refusing to move another inch. Its jet-black eyes glistened as it stared at the puzzled Centurion, its chestnut coat glimmering softly in the noon sun.

And the Centurion understood, for he saw a heavy tiredness in those black orbs and a sense of inevitability that accompanied this bottomless exhaustion. His steed was an old companion of many journeys and many battles, and finally, it was time for them to part.

He reached for its muzzle and fondled it affectionately. In reply, It nuzzled against his waist gently, a final gesture of goodwill towards the good master.

Without much ado, the Centurion quitely drew his sword from its sheath and slid it past the jugular. A small whimpering neigh followed; and the Centurion winced, for he wished it to be as brief as possible. The head fell to the muddy ground, its luxurious mane now matted with thick blood. The Centurion turned away, drawing his attention away from the unsightly deed and towards his path.

A great mist lingered on the opposite shore. Strange, he thought; had it been there but a moment ago? He approached the waters slowly, a great drum beating loudly against his chest as he did so. The end-point of his journey was just beyond this crossing. An anxiety was rising inside his mind, building up to a crescendo of uncertainty.

He knelt by the river-bed and scooped up a handful of water. He looked at it at length and eventually decided against tasting it. It was far too muddy. With a grunt, he splashed it away. He brought his hands together and closed his eyes, as though in a prayer.

Images flashed unbidden across his mind.

Two great and mighty armies, arrayed across both sides of the river. One was very much real; the other but a spectre, a shadow of the real threat, sitting hundreds of miles away in Rome. Two armies, led by two consuls: but Pompeii was absent, represented instead by champions of the Optimates. Five ghostly figures passed through, their features obscured by the morning fog. A Praetor, with a gleaming shield; a War Maiden, possessed of a flowing mane of gold; a Marksman, whose aim was without flaw; a Barbarian, armed with a terrible hammer whose very name brought forth terror and fury into the minds of his enemies; and an Iron Smith, garbed in imposing armor from head to toe.

Caesar, of course, was not impressed.

The great General was steely-eyed, possessed of grit and youthful energy that belied his old age- but his posture was grave and erect, as he reflected on the impending decision. The appearance of the apparitions bore unmistakeable meaning. In the end, there was but one course to take. He turned to his immediate suboordinate and said the immortal words, _Alea Iacta Est._The die had been cast.

The Centurion's eyes shot open, and he gasped audibly. The vision now seemed alien, inconcievable: as a dream seems once it has passed. He was shaken, more than he had thought possible. This journey was obviously more important to him than he previously thought.

But why was he there? What awaited him beyond the mist? The answers eluded him for the moment. He had to find out on his own.

With renewed resolve, he ventured out into the unknown. He stepped into the shallow waters, which merely rose up to his knees. He started to wade through, steadily getting closer to the other shore.

It was when he was midway through that something inexplicable happened. The ground beneath this feet gave way, and he felt an unseen force exert an inescapable pull on his body. He flailed his arms around desperately in an effort to stay afloat, but it was all for naught: soon, he was pulled below, drawn faster and faster towards an unknown point of origin as everything started to fade away from view. Light rapidly gave way to darkness.

The water flooded in through his mouth and into his lungs. He would have screamed, but it would only let in the water faster.

He was going to drown in the middle of nowhere. What was worse, he didn't even know why.

#####

_23rd November 2005_

**The Bar With No Name, Greenwich Village**

Carol prodded the man in front of her gently in the shoulders, as delicately as she could. But she was getting impatient after all.

"Raine...this is sort of embarrassing," she whispered into his ears. And she wasn't lying: she had known men who couldn't hold their liquor over the years, but none who promptly fell asleep after downing a few shots of vodka coke.

"Look, you go off on whatever business you have, lady," the bartender advised. He had a wry look on his roughly-cut, square-jawed face; but he knew well enough to keep his business to himself and not to press matters where he didn't need to. "I will take care of the fella here and get him sorted out and on his feet."

"Really?" Carol asked, almost not believing her luck.

"Yeah, sure." the bartender flashed a friendly smile. It was a quiet night, and he didn't really have that much to do at the moment.

"Thanks, Frank. You are a life-saver." she pecked him lightly on the cheek. "Give him these when he wakes, will you?" she handed him her car keys before taking off for the door. The door ornament jingled serenely as she swung it shut.

Frank then proceeded to go about his business, as usual: cleaning out some used glasses and rounding up the litter thrown about the tables around the cramped little room. This went on for the entirety of five minutes; after which the man asleep on his barstand suddenly shot up, wide awake, waving his arms around and coughing like a madman.

"Not exactly a beauty sleep, was it?" Frank said as he waited for the man to catch his wind.

"Weird dream..." Raine blurted out between gasps for air.

Frank nodded in understanding. He had seen far stranger things in the relatively small time since he had taken on the bar. "Wait a little bit. This tonic will straighten you out," Frank said, as he proceeded to pour said liquor into a glass.

"Thanks," Raine said, as he rubbed his temple, looking around his back at the otherwise vacant bar. "Say, where is everyone?"

"They had to leave. Some emergency business...said you would understand," Raine 'Ahh'ed quietly in apparent understanding. "Your lady waited on you for a while before taking off, though."

"Oh?" Raine asked, straightening out his leather jacket. He looked rather dishevelled for a youth of his age, Frank noted.

"Yeah. Not mighty gentlemanly of you to fall asleep on her. And just after two shots, too..." Raine shrugged in resignation. Clearly, drinking didn't agree with him. "Well, she left you these," he handed Raine the car keys.

"Well, fancy that," Raine said, a rather stupid grin on his face.

"Here." Frank handed him the drink. Raine sipped it testily, then shuddered a bit after gulping it down. "This is some strong stuff."

At that exact moment, the door ornament jingled to announce the arrival of a new customer. A lean man of dark complexion walked in, his attire mostly obscured by a black trenchcoat; his unique hairstyle- bleached bond cornrows spiked backwards- made him immediately stand out from the crowd (even though there wasn't one to speak of). A large scar ran down his right cheek.

"Hey." Raine waved off a salute towards the new arrival. The man regarded him with a stony stare, before taking a seat by a table at the corner.

"The usual?" Frank asked. The man simply nodded in reply. "Right..." Frank mixed in a martini cocktail and served it to the corner table.

"What's his story?" Raine asked, genuinely curious.

"Been coming in for the last two or three days. Asks for the same blend every time."

"What, shaken not stirred?" Raine hoped he was up on his cultural references.

"Ehh, close, but no dice." Frank left it at that and went back to polishing up his glasses. He was being very careful in choosing his words with the young man. People hanging around Steve Rogers and Carol Danvers weren't exactly the safest bunch to kid around with. He had gotten three concussions the last five times he had gotten into a fight with Captain America, and he didn't even have health insurance during those last two.

You see, Frank the bartender used to be this supervillain called Constrictor (you know, with metal wrist coils and everything!). Over the course of his not-so-decorated career, he had done some things he wasn't proud of. He wasn't exactly living the good life, so two years ago he made a deal to switch over to SHIELD and got his sentence commuted to community service as a result. His cooperation with the authorities didn't exactly make him any friends in his old community, so he decided to relocate to Greenwich Village and live out the rest of his life in peace.

And it was working well too, until half of the Avengers walked in for a drink. But he didn't mind the excitement. Carol had been a steady, if sporadic, patron over the years, and it was nice to see old faces again. As long as he wasn't on the recieving end of a punch, that is.

"So...what's the occasion?" Frank asked at length.

"Well..." there was that stupid grin again. "I am retiring."

Frank chuckled softly. "Kind of young for that, aren't you?"

"Technically, I am kind of between jobs at the moment. Just...waiting for the next assignment."

"And what would that be, if you don't mind me asking?"

"Couldn't really tell you. I mostly operate on a need-to-know basis," Raine answered truthfully. Lately, not a lot of things were coming down the usual channels.

"And how's that working out for ya?"

"Yeah..." Raine drowned the last dregs of the tonic. "Let me get back on that to you, right? So how much do I owe you, mister...?"

"It's on the house." Frank waved away further protestations from the young man. "And it's Frank. Just Frank."

"Frank, you are an alright fellow on my book." Raine rapped the man's shoulders lightly before getting up. He looked up at his wrist watch; it was starting to get late.

And it was going to be a long drive to Brooklyn.

#####

It was when Raine had gotten into the driver's seat of Carol's 68 Mustang that Raine noticed the solitary figure standing still by the entrance door. A closer look later, he realised that it was the same man from the bar. Large, ashen white orbs peered at him, almost straining to burst out of that massive skull.

Raine poked his face out of the window. The Bar With No Name had a reputation for attracting all sorts of shady individuals, Carol had explained earlier. Raine regarded the man with a steady eye; the inspection yielded no further interesting insights.

A mystery. Raine hated mysteries. He was the kind of person who was used to thinking in straight lines. Mysteries more often than not required twisting and turning that turned those straight lines into a bowl of sphagetti. Raine simply didn't have the energy for that sort mental effort. If there were things that simply wanted to be left alone, he figured there must be some good reasons behind it; so he decided to live and let live.

"So...need a lift?" Raine asked loudly, in an effort to break the ice. The silence only intensified: it bordered on being tangible, hanging around the air and weighing down on his shoulders. After a few seconds, Raine shrugged. _Suit yourself._

He slotted the key in its place and turned it: the engine roared to life, with the 400 horsepower engine causing a mighty uproar as Raine maneuvered the car around the parking lot. Just before he slid the stick shift off reverse and into the first gear, he turned his head to the sidewalk one last time. The stranger was nowhere to be seen. _Figures._

As he pressed his foot to the accelerator pedal and changed gears, his eyes shifted to the car radio-set. _Well, why not?_

A few seconds of tuning later, the sound of coins dropping into a payphone came pouring through the speakers. A retro-tune followed soon after.

#####

_"Turn right to I-95,"_ the cool female voice of the onboard GPS chirped with tepid enthusiasm. Raine complied with due diligence; he was greeted with a steady, almost hypnotic procession of equally interspaced tail-lights for as far as he could see. It was oddly soothing.

Raine let himself get attuned to it, until it became a natural occurrence. There was a curious sense of familiarity to it: even though the notion itself was faintly ridiculous. Still, he couldn't deny that aura of belonging- that odd mixture of static and fluidity. Looking at the endless lines of dimly-lighted vehicles, he couldn't help but feel a connection, however tenuous, to all of them. Individually, they were each on their separate paths, but for now, they were taking part in the same trek.

It was knowing without really knowing.

A year. It had been a year since he had touched down on the Moon. A year since he ended up joining the Avengers. A year.

More than a year, actually.

How did time end up flying by so fast?

These days, now that he really didn't have that much left to do, he had went over everything he did in those earlier days with a fine comb. What did he accomplish? Did he honestly make a difference? Now that he was on the outside looking in, he wasn't so sure.

Joining up with the Avengers. It felt like a lifetime ago. Going back over that first meeting, it seemed so spontaneous. Superheroes. Whatever gave him the bright idea?

It all seemed like a dream, now. Except he wasn't still awake; just self-aware of the absurdity and shifting nature of the dreaming. Maybe that's what he was waiting for now: something to wake him up.

So there he was. Waiting. Picking off loose ends. And now there was only one thread left to severe.

Carol.

What was it that they had? It was difficult to quantify. It would be easy to say it was love, and that was certainly what he believed in the heady days of their relationship, but once the initial glow wore off, he wasn't so sure about that anymore.

One thing had led to another. They were both at places in their life where they found it natural to share space with someone else. And now they were both going places. Her, probably a steady career with the Airforce with an occasional dash of superheroing on the side. Him, who knows where.

So whatever was inevitably coming, it was a natural transition more than anything else. People come together, and then move apart all the time. It was an organic development.

Then why did it cause him so much doubt when he thought about it?

_"Turn right to take exit towards Hutchinson Parkway."_

He did as advised. He spared a glance at the freeway through his sideway mirror, at the uniform, synchronised movement. The spell was over.

He looked at the odometer. Seventeen miles. Those were the first seventeen miles he had ever driven in his life. Yet it came so easily to him, like it was second nature. Now how did that work out?

It must have been part of basic training, he supposed. It had to be, with the way he could just let his mind drift and let his instincts handle most of the necessary actions. He tried to remember, but as always, gave up after the first few moments. He couldn't remember a lot of things, lately.

He could have asked Support about it, he supposed. If he hadn't got his armor trashed in that one fight. He chided himself for that one once again: he had been so damn cocky! Cocky, and stupid.

No suit, no A.I. That was how things worked. So now he was stuck following the broadest of guidelines. He was biding away his time, waiting for the big boys to take notice. Until then, he had to make do with strictly need-to-know protocol.

Need-to-know. He was liking that term less and less.

"_Turn right to enter-"_

Raine had already swerved right before the GPS had finished giving out its instructions, only to find himself greeted by a hail of oncoming vehicles on a one-way street.

"_-Error. Recalculating route..."_

Raine quickly steered aside to avoid the nearest car, the bumper nicking off a good deal of paint from the side of the other car.

He hoped the insurance would cover it. Otherwise, Carol was going to kill him.

_"Recalculating..."_

Just like a machine to stop working when it's most inconvenient.

The surge of adrenaline pouring through his body gave him a welcome boost of awareness, but even then he couldn't help but feel that something was wrong. Everything felt off by a microsecond.

He shrugged it off for the moment and decided to focus on the present situation. Two cars were coming side by side, with little to no space between them. There was a good fifty feet between them and the Mustang, fortunately. Raine hoped that his instincts would pull through and proceeded to execute a u-turn. It was then, that the wave of sluggishness suddenly became much more apparent, and it seemed to be intensifying at an exponential rate. To his horror, Raine found that his fingers wouldn't budge.

What the hell was happening to him?

He was panicking, going over all sort of ridiculous notions as to what could have happened. He remembered reading about something called the Locked-In Syndrome, where sudden, disruptive trauma caused total paralyis of the limbs. He wondered if that was the case here. But then what was the causative trauma?

He tried to blink. He succeeded, but found that even this was becoming harder than the second.

Horns were blaring all over by this point, but they started to get dimmer and more distant, as though distorted through a barrier. His hearing must be starting to subside as well. He tried to put his foot to the brake pedal and remove the other from the accelerator, but found both to be unresponsive to his commands.

The twin oncoming cars tried to lessen their pace, but it was too little too late. The front bumpers rammed straight into the sides of the Mustang, squeezing it tight like a sandwich. Two of his ribs popped immediately, with his left shoulder being dislocated and right wrist being entirely shattered. His skull was precariously close to being caved in by stray shards of metal.

He was this close to being crushed to death.

The momentum of the hits spun the car in an anti-clockwise direction, disrupting the suspension of the car and causing it to flip it haphazardly in the air. Bleary-eyed, he spotted a young mother with her toddler in tow standing dumbstruck not more than five feet away. Terror gripped his senses when he realised that the car was probably going to land smack dab on her location.

He mustered the last of his strength and tried to flail his limbs about in an effort to shift the momentum of the car to no avail. Finally, an idea sparked inside his fading consciousness; he pushed out his inner energies to the palms of his hands, and sure enough, faint streams of blue shot off through the roof and against the air, counteracting the anti-clockwise momentum and sending the vehicle flying in an arc higher in the air.

Satisfied with the knowledge that he had succeeded in putting the civilians out of harms way, Raine let go of his slipping consciousness. Darkness slipped over his mind just as the car crashed nose first into the roof of a nearby Taco Bell.


	4. Apocrypha

_A/N: Alright, just thought that I would give out some primers on the characters appearing in this chapter, in case any reader is not familiar with them._

* * *

_Hank McCoy __(Beast)_:B_lue fuzzy guy, has a mixture of apish and leonine features. _He's basically the X-Men's resident scientist. Appeared in X3 and First Class.

_Reed Richards: Probably the smartest guy in the Marvel Universe. Leader of the Fantastic Four. Too much into science. Probably would have gone insane if not for the tethering effect of his family._

_Namor: King of the Seas. Think Aquaman, except sexier and with a lot more attitude. Really long-lived. Has fought with Captain America in WW2, a minor rivalry with the FF from time to time, and has served with the Avengers multiple times._

_Doctor Stephen Strange: The go to guy when it comes to dealing with anything magic-related in the Marvel Universe. Absurdly powerful. Spends most of his time battling otherworldly demons and keeping Earth safe from interdimensional invasions._

_Scott Summers (Cyclops): Leader of the X-Men. Master strategist, and a pretty good tactician. Iron-willed. At this point in continuity, he is grappling with a lot of burdens, as mutants have been driven to the brink of extinction and he has declared 200 or so left to be under his personal protection. Numbed by years of conflict and racial persecution. Survival is pretty much the only thing that matters to him right now. Has taken Xavier's seat in the covert council (which is named, get this, the Illuminati!) after the former's death._

_He is the guy who shoots lasers out of his eyes. Appeared in the original X-Men trilogy and the first Wolverine film._

* * *

_Hope that helped!_

* * *

_**Chapter 2: Apocrypha**_

* * *

_10th December 2005_

**Avengers Tower**

Tony Stark stared at the wall-length mirror in front of him, his skin still prickly from the shower moments before. What was it he had said to Maya Hansen before they had carted her off? _At least I will be able to look myself in the mirror tomorrow morning. _And was that true now, some two weeks after the fact? He peered closely at his reflection, his hand absent-mindedly scratching his slightly overgrown goatee.

Well the jury was still out on that one, he decided at length.

A cool, tingling gas started to seep in from selected openings around the corners of the room, the resulting slightly mist obscuring his natural vision. It didn't really matter when you had more visual acuity than most spy satellites. The gas reacted slowly with the liquid seeping in through his pores, and he put his mind to ease as the rest of the process continued at a snail's pace.

He looked around, if only briefly. There was scarce space: any more would have been unnecessary. The utter whiteness of the floor and roof, combined with the one-way reflection of the mirror walls, had a very unnerving effect on any inhabitants, he had been told.

Tony wondered if he had been on a Machiavellian bent when he designed this particular section of the penthouse. It was just one step below from a sensory deprivation tank. Except, instead of depriving yourself of all your sensory output, it was turned inwards: a crash course in psychoanalysing oneself to death. A few seconds in the room, and you could hear your own heartbeat unaided; be aware of your own natural odor, taste the sanitary, artificial tanginess of chlorine in the air. Be forced to confront all your faults, superficial or otherwise.

He remembered Hank looking particularly shaken when his session was over. Ghosts of Past, Present and Future. That sort of confrontation would leave any well-balanced man unhinged, let alone someone with a history like Hank.

Tony wasn't thrilled to find out about this little sadistic streak. Who was he trying to punish- himself, or everyone else?

Tony squinted hard at his reflection, trying to find out if there were any outward indicators of the obvious change. This wasn't the first time, and it surely wouldn't be the last.

He harkened back to Sal Kennedy's impassioned rant. Unparalled processing power, techkinesis...so what? Did it really help? Was he a better person? He knew that he wanted to be; but was that really enough? What would he have to do to put his mind at rest?

He laughed when he realised that he had fallen for his own trick. He hated this psychonalysing crap just as much as anybody else.

"_Decontamination completed," _an androgynous tone announced from the roof speaker. It's task completed, the gas quickly dissipated through the tiny suction pumps situated just below the openings.

Tony grabbed a towel from the rack. High time that he was out of here.

He was already running late for an appointment with a certain hairy individual.

####

Dr. Henry McCoy looked up from his notes, his ears raised and twitching as they filtered in the muted footsteps, now getting ever closer. Soon enough, Tony Stark, fully suited in an Armani and possessed of his usual smug, faux-modest demeanor, swung past the double Perspex doors.

"Anthony! My dearest friend," McCoy rattled out in a droll tone. His irritation, barely apparent in his voice, wasn't so easily hidden in his feline features. His whiskers were slightly erect and puffy, along with the rest of his dark blue fur: a natural response of many a mammal when faced with a larger, deadlier predator.

"Oh it's that bad, is it?" Tony asked, all smiles.

"Carefully take note of how I entirely refrain from quoting someone intentionally obscure," McCoy pointed out. Sarcasm was the last refuge of the truly exhausted. He simply didn't have the energy to make that sort of conscious effort after the last two days.

Tony nodded in an effort to play along. Henry McCoy may have had a penchant for the dramatic, but his knack for the weird-but-scientfic more than made up for it.

McCoy grunted impatiently as he made his way over to the computer console, avoiding all the miscellaneous material thrown about the lab. It was organised chaos, but not _his _organised chaos, and that irked him to no end. Slaving away 24/7 in another man's work space was not his idea of having a good time.

But what could he have done about it? Tony Stark had asked for him personally a week ago and there was simply no refusing that man.

The things one has to do for friends.

"Here's a rough draft on what I have worked out so far..." McCoy muttered, his voice losing volume half-way through the sentence; his focus being mostly divided to working the console. It wasn't exactly easy to handle devices for normal hand-to-hand interaction with paws. Regardless, he made do with what he had, and soon a large hologram popped up against the wall. It was handwritten, scribbled haphazardly with myriads of observations and hypotheses, their natures ranging from the relatively mundane to the highly esoteric.

Tony took a long, steady glance at the file from top to bottom. "Alrighty, then," he said, a million things running through his mind as he turned away from the hologram.

"I take it that you are not the least bit confused, then?" McCoy asked, his baritone saturated with minor relief. It had been a long time since he didn't have to explain his particular brand of technobabble to someone else. It was hard to attend super-genius get-togethers every now and then when every mad man in a five thousand mile radius was trying to make your species extinct. (And more so when they may have actually ended up accomplishing that very thing.)

"The handwriting could do with some work," Tony confessed. At least Extremis hadn't done away with his sense of humor, he mused. "It makes you look more like a MD than a PHD."

"Oh, the ignominy of the comparison. Woe is me," McCoy tilted his head backwards and slapped his wrist to the forehead for maximum effect.

"Nice touch. Really brings out the inner thespian in you," Tony remarked, but his gaze was unfocused, the sharpness not really there in his rapier wit. This was him trying to multitask and being secretive about it.

McCoy recognised the maneuver: he had often caught Summers doing something similar in the last couple of weeks. A sort of brooding, masked by a superficial, casual indifference. He had noticed Xavier employing the same tactic over the years as well.

Leaders and their shadow games and shadow cabinets, he thought darkly.

There were occasions where Henry saw what he wanted to see, heard what he wanted to hear and blocked out everything else. This was one of them. Whatever games the Summers, Starks and Xaviers of the world were so interested in playing...McCoy wanted no part of it.

"Just for the sake of the clarity," McCoy began once again, "if you would allow me to verbally reiterate the gist of my findings? If only to see that we are both on the same page."

"Go on," Stark said, grinning softly. He knew that Henry had been raring to get a chance to present his findings in a more refined light. What he had shown Tony before on the hologram were the theoretical equivalent of dirty underwear.

"Right," McCoy took a moment to better compose himself before continuing on. "Let's start with the nanites."

"They handle all the grunt work," Tony butted in. If Henry really wanted his chance to show off, then he was going to make him work for it.

"Yes, yes," McCoy said, quickly catching on. This was one game he wasn't averse to playing. "Protecting the immune system, handling all the body repairs. It's why he recovered so quickly after that mess with the Void, you will remember."

Not the happiest of memories, Tony mused. Perfect memory recall was a bane to your existence if you could potentially remember everything- even all the unpleasantness- in your life at the slightest mention.

McCoy was quick to press his advantage. "However, these are just...stage-hands, to use a metaphor," he continued with a flourish. "The real masterminds, the-"

"Magicians," Tony said, making a quick recovery.

McCoy grinned, his lips spread wide like that of a cheshire cat. "What should we call them, I wonder? Sub-quantum organisms...not much oomph to it, is there?"

"Well, seeing as Hank Pym discovered them first, maybe _he_ should get the dubious honor," Tony suggested in a deliberately off-hand manner.

The grin on McCoy's face quickly turned into a dark frown. The Other Hank. He hated him on principle.

"He would probably call them Pymorganisms or some other dreadfully unimaginative moniker," McCoy muttered exasperatedly. He was robbed of any further enthusiasm for this particular topic. "Whatever they are...they have a very delicate job. A very precise, complicated juggling act. It's somewhat similar to Van Der Waal's interaction, except instead of sliding layers of molecules, you have got sliding layers of reality."

"So basically, it's an encryption protocol," Tony summed it up as succinctly as possible, "And somehow, it started breaking down around the time we were mounting an expedition in Raine's cranium."

McCoy nodded gravely, "There appears to be a maintenance failure of some sort. This might be more directly connected to our mutual friend being in a coma for the last couple of weeks...but it's all conjecture at this point. Concrete data is sorely lacking."

McCoy sighed. He faced Tony directly, His yellow eyes boring deep into Tony's own hazel ones. The thin veneer of academic sarcasm slipped, and in that moment Tony saw just how terrified Hank McCoy really was.

And this was a man who had seen many great, terrible things.

"I can't believe that you had someone like him around for this long, Tony," McCoy spoke, his voice reduced almost to a whisper.

"Eh, he's not a bad guy once you get to know him," Tony joked. He felt the nagging doubt inside him all the same; it hung around at the back of his head, an unwelcome tennant, gnawing at his conviction and self-esteem.

Tony had a history with these sort of house guests over the years. He ignored this most current pest for the time being: he would deal with it in due time. Instead, he focused himself on McCoy, who had resumed speaking once again.

"The technology applied here is, frankly, staggering. It's the power and scale of Omega level beings like..." McCoy stopped himself at the last moment from using the W word. "Jean Grey and the Molecule Man, being focused and handled like a surgeon's scalpel, with the utmost precision. Whatever these things are, they definitely know what they are doing."

"Yeah," Tony concluded. "That's about it, I think. Keep me posted on any updates."

"So...any ideas so far about what you are going to do about it?" McCoy asked, knowing full well that he wasn't going to get any straight answers.

Tony stared at Henry for a moment, his expressions carefully clouded from any external scrutiny. "I will come up with something," he replied, with a steady smile. "See you later, Hank," and with that, he was off to the door.

As McCoy turned his attention to his research once again, he was struck with remembrance of a quote from a certain Charlie Chaplin talkie. "Machine men, with machine minds, and machine hearts..." he hummed under his breath.

He wondered if Tony Stark's Extremis enhanced ears had heard him say that.

#####

Heavy is the head that wears the crown.

That was the first thing that came to Tony Stark's mind when he looked up from the tablet PC in his hand and at the other five gentlemen seated around the table. How could he ever think of anything else?

They were all heroes in their own ways. But more than that, they were leaders. They had burdens to bear, responsibilities to handle, jurisdictions of their own to look after.

And they couldn't afford to fail. The cost of failure was simply too great.

"So...I noticed that you didn't wear heavier armor for the underwater trip," Reed Richards spoke placidly from his left, that ever-present curiosity evident in his lighted expression.

"It made the journey a whole lot quicker," Tony explained. "The Hydro armor weighs a good 250 pounds more than the usual gear."

"But that would require some excruciatingly precise calibrations for the trip. Not that I doubt your seamanship, but-" Reed stopped when he saw that Tony had raised a hand in protest.

"Look, Reed, I appreciate your enthusiasm. But I can see where you were leading me on with that, and I just have had enough questions to answer about that elephant in the room for a while," Tony smiled, hoping he was being as polite as possible. "Not everything in my life has to revolve around Extremis."

"...I can understand, Tony," The disappointment was clear as day on his face. "I will save the prodding for later."

"So, I hope everyone here has read their data packets..." Tony said loudly, addressing the entirety of his present company. Four-fifths of which returned an affirmative answer (or a nod); the remaining one-fifth, one certain pointy-eared monarch of the high seas, decided to give voice to his concerns.

"I have read it," Namor stated, his natural haughtiness submerged beneath a casual approach. "From what I can ascertain, it is a dilemma where my particular talents are of little to no use. Such matters tend to be beyond my usual sphere of influence."

Tony nodded quietly, taking a moment to process the unusual nature of Namor's statement. Humility was not his forte, and yet he had swallowed his pride and readily admitted that he was firmly out of his comfort zone.

The fact that Namor was naturally hot-headed did not necessarily mean he couldn't be practical when he needed to be, Tony noted internally.

"I understand that, Namor," Tony spoke. "We are just looking to cover all angles, and everyone here can provide an unique perspective towards that end. Besides, I think you speak for all of us when you say that this matter lies outside our usual sphere of influence."

That was good enough for Namor, who nodded in approval and leant back against his chair, arms crossed firmly over his bulging chest. Patience was a virtue: that it had been a long while until he had learned the value of this fact did not mean much to one as long-lived as he.

Tony looked at the men to his right, and at the men to his left. _Perspective. _He needed a fresh set of eyes on the problem. Black Bolt? He didn't look to be in a mood to over-communicate: he was still getting the hang of the audio device Reed had made to substitute for the telepathic communication that Xavier's presence had allowed in yestreyears.

Strange smiled keenly when Tony's gaze fell upon him; he was prepared to help in any capacity he was required to, but beyond that there was little he could do to take a more proactive stance in dealing with the problem. A sorcerer, even a Sorcerer Supreme, was ill-equipped to deal with dilemmas of the purely scientific variety.

And Summers? He was calm and collected, his face impassive and his emotions indiscernible due to his ruby-quartz visor. He was observing, taking notes about the modus operandi of the rest of his peers. Weighing each of them individually, as both allies and foes, if the situation should ever come to that in the distant (or near) future. Caution was something that came naturally to the man who had only recently declared himself the impromptu leader of a species driven to the brink of extinction did not begrudge him of this sort of natural apprehension, and left Summers to it, turning his attention to the only other scientist in the group.

"Reed, care to share your thoughts on the situation?" Tony said at last. He really didn't want to start this with Reed; given the nature of the dilemma, however, he didn't have much choice in the matter.

Reed nodded, very relieved to recieve the invitation. He clapped his hands together and pressed his chin against the clasped fingers, his keen interest on the matter very evident upon his pliant, slightly stretched features. As a matter of formality, he affected a manner of utmost professionalism upon his posture: the man's exuberance for scientific weirdness was boundless to the point of overriding all social norms if left unchecked.

"So," He began. "Has anyone here heard of the Council of Nicea?"

It was an unorthodox, off-the-hook query. While some degree of confusion reigned in the minds of all of his peers, it was Namor, always outspoken, who vocalised this vague feeling into something more concrete.

"A tangent! How delightful," the King of Atlantis said dryly.

Reed frowned. He curled his lips, which appeared slightly swollen. His cheeks seemed abnormally sunken, which gave his eyes the appearance of bulging orbs, threatening to fall off their sockets. There were moments when his elasticity got slightly out of hand.

"Bear with me, will you Namor?" Reed asked: the request was more hypothetical than anything else. Namor harrumphed, a palpable air of infectious skepticism hanging around him like a cloud.

"I have studied the matter in some detail, yes," Stephen Strange spoke cautiously when he saw that the brief impasse had passed. "I really can't see what the first Ecumenical Council of the Catholic Church has to do with our problem here, Reed."

"I have heard of it as well," Tony said. His mother's devotion to the Church had bleeded through on some occasions in his younger years. "I think Stephen is better equipped to elaborate on this, though. My Sunday school education's a little hazy after all these years of being a staunch atheist."

"Right," Strange paused, mentally determining the best way to condense the complex matter into a concise, easily understandable form. "The Council of Nicaea convened in, obviously, Nice in 325 A.D and was presided over by Constantine I, one of the last great Roman emperors. Basically, the Council is the birthplace of modern Christianity. The Holy Trinity is firmly established and competing beliefs such as those stating that Jesus Christ was not always the Son of God, or that he was just an extraordinary human being, are categorically denied and refuted as false and heresy."

"More importantly," Reed interjected. "The Four Gospels were officially endorsed as the true version of the New Testament and simultaneously, the rest of the accounts of the life of Jesus Christ were branded as heretical. Apocrypha.

The analogy I am going for, is that through Raine Zin, we have recieved a very sanitised, heavily edited view of the Guardians' agenda that is tailor-made to our native sensibilities. G.U.A.R.D.? I doubt if that's actually a real term. Their agent chose to interact with us as a superhero, a medium that we are intimately comfortable with. In fact, I doubt that he is even human to begin with. Surgically altered, or maybe tampered with at a more intrinsic level.

The question is, what sort of apocrypha are they filtering out of this canon? What is the sort of sensitive information that they think is too volatile to share with us? It's a line of thought that bears some pursuing, I think,"

Tony stared steadily at Reed, his brows furrowed and raised. It was exactly what he had suspected: Reed wasn't threatened by the situation as much as he was intrigued. There was just too much of the scientist in him. It was the technology that fascinated him, and what he might be able to accomplish with it once the secrets were deciphered. That this was purposefully withheld from humanity was what frustrated him the most.

He wasn't afraid of the potential malice of the people wielding such deadly tools. And that was just like Reed, Tony thought with an inward chuckle. He never saw the inherent potential for chaos within people, never regarded anyone as truly evil. Even with someone as Doom, he saw someone who had deviated greatly from the usual paths of life; a lamentable loss that may yet be corrected: a broken man that may yet be redeemed. To Reed, everything could be fixed. All he needed were the right tools.

But the current danger that this unknown faction represented was too great to be ignored. Tony hated to be the one to directly contradict Reed, but someone had to do it. Fortunately, as Tony prepared himself for the unsavory deed, someone beat him right to it.

And that someone, to everyone's surprise, was Black Bolt.

He didn't really speak; rather, he mumbled the words at a sub-sonic frequency to the audio device, which promptly blurted them out in a tone which was extrapolated from Black Bolt's own natural tenor. The voice, when it came, was deep and characteristically regal, a persistent static noise underlying every intonation.

"Speculation of that sort can be healthy, as long as it is kept in check and does not run in excess. But I detect a line of questioning that is curiously absent in your reasoning, Richards, and it is something that we should be asking above all. Your Romans phrased it as such: _Qui Bono_. Who profits?"

Reed simply smiled, pleased that his invention was working close to perfection. It must be liberating, he thought, to be able communicate so freely after so many years of self-imposed silence. "I doubt that profit would hold the same meaning in their mode of logic, Black Bolt. But I see your point."

"Do you really, though?" it was Scott Summers who spoke now, with a quiet confidence that contrasted with the cautiousness he had displayed until moments prior. "I think we are getting too strung up on the specifics, not seeing the forest because of the trees. Why exactly have these Guardians taken an interest in our affairs? Black Bolt has the right idea about this situation: what do they have to gain from this prolonged interaction? Is it a symbiotic relationship, or a parasitic one?"

"I understand your caution, Scott, but I think we are letting our past history cloud our judgement in this matter," Reed said in a careful tone, hoping that he was not stepping on anyone's toes. "The fact that we haven't had peaceful first contact with any of the known extraterrestrial civilisations- the Skrulls, the Kree, the Shiar, and the rest- shouldn't necessarily mean that we are facing similar opposition in this new party. What we know about them so far suggests a radical departure from the usual pattern of events."

"But we know so little about them, Reed," Scott countered, his conviction seeping through the forcefulness of his tone. "Practically nothing, in fact. I think we have been very lucky in our dealings with external forces. It's all been with forces which are fundamentally similar to us, despite the obvious discrepancies in technology. We can all understand the very human imperative to expand, to conquer and assimilate weaker cultures into a greater hegemony. If this new faction is too alien to begin with, then what can we possibly expect from them? They have been observing us for at least a year now, if not longer. Have they noticed anything wrong? Do they feel the need to interfere more directly, to steer us towards a 'correct' path? Just what are we facing here?"

That drove the point home for most of them. It spoke to the secret fear present amongst all them: the fear of the unknown, of an irrevocable disruption of the status quo. But this fear, raw and unwieldy, served little purpose towards the reaching of a shared consensus. And while Tony was amongst the few who grew aware of this fact, it was Namor who chose to act upon it.

"Remember that threshold for healthy speculation that Black Bolt was referring to? You lot might have crossed it," he scoffed. "There still remains the matter of the boy. Why would these Guardians, or whoever they are, abandon him in this comatose state? They seem to be in no hurry to help him, whereas the last time he was critically wounded, they sent two agents fo assistance!"

"There is the possibility that their 'assistance' might have been specifically arranged for our benefit." Reed suggested with due diligence.

Tony seized his opportunity before any further debate could commence. "I believe we have done enough guesswork for the time being. We can work out any possible contingencies for a worst-case scenario, but let's focus on getting some answers first. Here's what we will do..."

He quickly told them his plans, pausing here and there for some feedback and subsequent corrections when they were needed. When the men finally left the meeting room, they did so with a clear and concise understanding of the thankless tasks which lay ahead of them.

Some forty minutes later, Tony was sitting alone in the vacated room, his palms pressed against his temple and fingers clutching fistfuls of unruly hair. There were no atheists in trenches, or so went the old saying.

No one had said it outright, but that's what they had done there: they had agreed on concentrated pre-emptive action against these mysterious entities if push did indeed come to shove.

They had agreed to go to war. And there but remained only one question.

Were the Guardians listening in?


	5. Trojan Horse

_**Chapter Three: Trojan Horse**_

* * *

_15th December, 2005_

The woman took a moment to observe her surroundings before she proceeded any further. The infirmary was empty, as was expected at this late hour. Her alertness pacified, she now proceeded through the expansive space at a steady pace, leisurely surveying her environment as she did so.

The infirmary looked lived in, as it had done for the last month or so. Notes strewn about haphazardly placed trolleys, half-used medical equipment placed hither and thither in a most inefficient manner. Echoes of people who had worked day and night lingered in the empty chairs and desks. Vague reminders of eventual failures and nagging incomprehension. She ignored them and continued straight on.

The woman paused in front of the glassed compartment at the center of the room. She placed her palm on against the fingerprint scanner, and leant forward, making sure her pupil lined up with the laser beam from the retina scanner. It took a few seconds for the equipment to process her data. An affirmative ping echoed through the room, and the following words flashed across the small wall-mounted screen beside the scanners.

"_Identity verified. Welcome, Carol Danvers."_

The doors slid open, and Carol stepped through, the heels of her boots clicking loudly against the plexiglass floor. She didn't know whose bright idea it was to place a fortified compartment in the middle of the infirmary, but she didn't mind. At any rate, she gave Tony Stark full marks for thinking ahead when it comes to security.

She dragged a chair closer to the bed and sat down on it, her gaze fixed upon the figure laid before her.

He had looked horribly mangled when they had wheeled him into the ICU. By any ordinary measure, Raine Zin should not have survived: his spine had been severed in three separate places by metal shards, and his skull had been caved in from the last crash. That he had been placed into the emergency room instead of the morgue spoke volumes of the special treatment reserved for people of his particular variety.

They had patched him up as best they could, but surgeons were hardly miracle workers. Ultimately, under the advice of men like Pym and McCoy, they had placed him under intensive care, skeptical of the man's chances of clinging on to dear life. There had to be limits to the punishment someone's body could take, even if that someone happened to be a superhuman.

Yet, over the next few days, they observed him in utter astonishment as the nanite fleet within his body slowly repaired injuries that were thought to be irreparable. And they couldn't help but feel envy as they witnessed this latter day miracle; why did these super-folk get to claw their way back to life when other people were doomed to perish? One of life's great injustices, those great dilemmas that would probably never be answered.

Thus, they might have felt a sort of savage satisfaction when Raine, being physically recovered, did not regain his consciousness- but instead they were befuddled and perplexed by this most unexpected development. They went through the usual battery of tests, and nothing came up beyond the normal. For all intents and purposes, the patient had slipped into a coma.

It was two weeks after the accident, then, that Tony had him moved to Avengers Tower and personally reconfigured the infirmary to support all of Raine's needs. Thereafter, all of the community's best experts in the medical field had flocked in, and eventually all had failed to find a solution to this particular dilemma.

Carol leant forward, tenderly grasping his palm in her hands. It felt warm, as though it was fighting a fever. His body temperature had been bafflingly erratic- there were sudden bouts of coldness interspaced by brief onsets of unnatural warmth. Just another mystery in a sea of others.

He looked serene; an aura of tranquility exuded off his skin, which was paler than usual. Sometimes, he displayed rare moments of mobility: a twitch of the fingers here, a fluttering of eyelids there. He would appear fitful, then, as though caught in an unpleasant dream, or more appropriately, a nightmare.

Carol looked on, resolutely. There was absolute silence except for the occasional chatter of the various equipment set-up around the bed.

She hadn't cried since they had hauled him off into the ICU. If he could come back from something like that, then he would come back from this latest setback. He had to.

She hearkened back to the events of the last few days. Tony Stark had been asking her all sorts of questions. Strange, unusual questions. _How much did Raine tell you about his work? Anything about his superiors or work friends?_

_Did he ever do anything usual?_

It was as though she was in the middle of an investigation surrounding a criminal suspect. Why these specific questions, and why now? Couldn't Tony ask Raine himself when they finally manage to get him back? They should sure as hell focus the manpower and effort on that instead playing Nancy Drew at this critical juncture, Carol thought bitterly.

And then there were these special visits. First it was Emma Frost, who hadn't appeared very thrilled at the prospect of carrying out whatever feat of telepathy Tony had requested her to. Then there was Stephen Strange, who spent hours upon hours alone in the compartment with Raine under candle light, carrying out an immensely complex magical ritual percievable and understandable only to a powerful mage like himself. They were trying to pry something out of Raine: did they even know just what they were looking for?

And what would they do with it if they ever found it?

Presently, the intercom inside the compartment chimed, seizing Carol's attention away from other distractions. She answered it, and the screen above it flickered to life, revealing the lean figures of Susan Storm and Janet Van Dyne standing primly outside the compartment.

"We come bearing gifts," Sue said with a warm smile, cradling a huge flower bouquet placed gingerly within her arms. From her side, Janet winked and smiled that million dollar smile that had made her famous across the whole world (among other things).

"Right. Let me come out," Carol said, smiling. Her spirits were lifted at the sight of these old acquaintances.

"Well, why can't we come in there?" Jan pointed out quizzically.

"Tony has installed all these biometric scanners around this box. If they detect an unknown signature, all hell will break loose," Carol stated, with more than a hint of exasperation.

"Well, that seems a bit...premature precaution, don't you think?" Jan asked.

"Tell me about it," Carol said dryly.

Without much ado, she exited the compartment and met up with the other two, who greeted her with sweet nothings and warm hugs. A great weight had lifted off her heart, if only momentarily. She directed them to a nearby table and arranged a seating arrangement from the organised chaos of her surroundings.

"We would have visited earlier, but you know how it is with Reed," Susan said, rolling her eyes. "Him and his trips to Higher Dimensions."

"It's the same with me," Jan explained. "Hank's been touring the lecture circuit in Europe for the last couple months, and he asked me to tag alone. Figured a change of scenery might be good for the nerves. It also helped with finding inspiration for those fashion lines I have been meaning to do. I have been getting some really good ideas!"

"You should share them with me sometime. I would love to see what's brewing in that devious mind of yours," Carol said.

"You got it, girl," Jan beamed.

"So...how you are holding up?" Sue asked, her voice brimming with earnest concern.

"Okay, I guess. We have all seen worse things," Carol rationalised. It was true.

"Come on, Carol. You don't have to put up a brave face with us," Sue nudged gently. "You can tell us what's really going on. Shed some load off your chest."

Carol nodded and hung her head, a turmoil of emotions threatening to surface beyond her level exterior. She reigned them in and collected her composure; but Sue was right, she thought. She needed to talk about it before the stress got the better of her.

"This...well, this reminds me of Mar-Vell," Carol said, quietly.

"Go on," Sue urged her on. She had done her share of grief counselling over the years. It was unavoidable, given the nature of their community.

"So many people from all sorts of fields came pouring in to offer their expertise, but in the end none of them were able to find a way to save him. He just lay there on his bed and withered away."

"He accepted it when it came, Carol. It was peaceful."

"But we tried so much to help him, Sue," Carol fought off the gathering moistness in her eyes. "But we couldn't do anything. I could feel him slipping away, slowly, getting further away from all of us."

"It's not the same with Raine," Jan interjected with a sternness that did not suit her dulcet contralto. "You have got to have hope, Carol."

"And I do," Carol replied with conviction, "Have hope, I mean. It's just that I can feel Raine teetering on the brink. It's almost like he's about to pass some point of no return. If we can do anything to bring him back, it has to be now. Or I fear that-"

Sue grasped her hands and squeezed them she could finish that thought.

"Be strong, Carol. You will get through this."

Carol smiled.

"Thanks."

A pair of footsteps echoed across the infirmary, getting closer and closer. One was loud, taken at strides, while the other was more muffled, as though one was travelling on bare feet. Soon enough, the figures of Tony Stark and Hank McCoy entered through the door, and Tony grinned like the devil when he saw the three already present in the room.

"Ladies," he rolled off in a smooth tone that never came off as sleazy, "I hope you haven't had much difficulty with our current seating arrangements. As you can see, currently we have more pressing concerns in our minds."

"Tony!" Jan almost screamed, rushing off from her chair and towards Tony, who engulfed her within his arms. It was easy to forget how bubbly Jan was: emotions just washed over her like a wave.

"You look good, girl," Tony said affectionately as he let her go. He had just gotten a flash of a date he had with Jan from all those years ago during their brief spell.

"Susan," McCoy spoke, his voice deep and rumbling. "I trust everything going fine back at home?"

"More or less. Reed's shut himself off in that Thought Room for the last couple of days, though," Sue stated ruefully.

"Doesn't he have to come out for the occasional potty break, that rascal?" McCoy asked with obvious annoyance, interlaced with the barest semblance of envy. He could never carry on with his work unabated without the caffeine. He would have gone mad otherwise.

"He took care of that little problem a year or two ago, I think. Besides, he could always hold it in for an ungodly amount of time," Sue finished with a wry smile.

"My dear lady, that is just too much information for my delicate ears…" McCoy turned to see Carol approaching him, her eyes narrowed and her cheeks caved in. She was clearly not amused.

"Hank. Who is it going to be this time?" Carol demanded.

"Well…" McCoy took a peek at his wristwatch. "They won't be long. You can see for yourself in…3…2…1...and..."

There was a loud popping sound, followed by a flash of light. The moment after, three additional figures were standing within the infirmary.

"Tadaa."

The one who immediately attracted attention was not remotely humanoid: rather, it was on all fours, a beast of considerable girth. Drool was splattered across its jowls. A tuning fork rested upon its furry brow. Its name was Lockjaw, and it was the faithful companion of the royal Inhumans of Attilan.

The figure standing to the animal's side was feminine, possessed both of grace and authority. She was garbed in a sleek yellow body suit that accentuated her authentic build. She was a welcome presence: Jan's eyes lit up with recognition and she started towards the woman.

"Crystal!" Jan exclaimed. Crystal laughed softly in reply. It was only after the two women had embraced though, that Jan noticed the tall man standing beside them. He was garbed in a long, flowing robe, complete with an overcoat, both garments being layered with an intricate, tapestry of lines that spiraled ever inwards. It was hypnotizing.

He stared curiously at Jan when he noticed her gaze upon him. A smile formed on his chafed lips. His grey eyes lit up to prominence when he recognized who she was.

And then the smile turned into a leer.

"Maximus," Jan muttered, unable to muster any of her usual enthusiasm. She hadn't called him by his full moniker: Maximus the Mad.

"Janet Van Dyne. That is your name, is it not?" Maximus asked. He did not wait for an answer. "The pleasure is all yours."

"Apparently," With that, Jan withdrew herself away from the man and into the company of the other women.

Tony led the visitors to the entrance of the glass compartment. He paused in front of the scanners, taking a moment to input the additional data required for the correct identification of the new arrivals. Once the task had been done, he and McCoy ushered them in, sans Lockjaw, who was left in the able care of the three women outside.

"So what are they bringing Maximus here for?" Sue asked skeptically. "He's not exactly what you would call a medical man."

"One can only guess," Carol said darkly.

Inside the compartment, Tony turned to Maximus, an expression of the utmost gravity coming upon his face.

"You have been brought up to speed on the matter, I suppose?" Tony asked.

"Yes, Yes. A fine mystery you have found yourselves here," Maximus looked hard and long at the prone figure laid upon the bed. "Fortunately, you will find that I am more than up to the task of deciphering this little riddle."

He dug into his coat pockets and fished out a flat, rectangular screen, followed by a rather ordinary looking syringe. A green liquid swirled in its tube.

"And how are we supposed to know that it's not, say, rat poison in there?" McCoy asked in jest, but there was reason beneath the barb.

"I can see them in there," Tony said, focusing his gaze solely on the syringe. "And…they are shaped like seahorses."

"An aesthetic choice," Maximus explained, "Come, let us not waste any more time."

He leaned against Raine's neck and plunged the syringe into his jugular.

"That's playing awfully fast and loose with proper procedure," McCoy stated, rather than complained.

"And how well has your rigid discipline served you so far, ape?" Maximus shot back.

"Name-calling. How original," McCoy traded forth. Maximus didn't reply and chose to ignore the man from thereon.

The Mad Inhuman instead focused his mental effort towards observing the readings on his touch pad, which had come alive, displaying endless horizontal streams of unrecognizable symbols.

"Can you understand any of it?" Tony asked Crystal. "I assume it's in your native language."

Crystal took a peek at the screen. "It is. But it's gibberish. It doesn't really say anything."

Maximus was quick to scoff at her in disdain. "And how are you fit to gauge the greatness of the fruits of my labors, cousin? But let us not quarrel. My Trojans are already interfacing with the native nanites."

"And you are sure that they will not trigger any alarms within the network?" McCoy asked again.

"If the data your Pym has gathered is accurate, then no. They will be piggybacking on the native frequencies of the Planckobes, and-"

"Planckobes? Is that what you call them?" McCoy chuckled.

"I will tell you that is a perfectly good name. Planck being the name of-"

"Yes, I get the connection. Planckobes. That is so much worse than Pymoorganisms."

"Leave the poor man to his work, will you Hank," Tony said, smiling.

Maximus tensed up, an eagerness flowing into his eyes as he stared intently at the screen.

"Right, they have bypassed the nanites, and breaking through the defense of the Planckrobes. Any moment now…"

The others were quiet, waiting for any further developments with baited breath.

"Any moment now…"

Suddenly, Raine's fingers twitched. Then his lips twitched as well. The twitching became more violent, and then his whole body shook violently.

"What the hell-" Tony couldn't believe what he was seeing.

The shakings ceased, and blood came pouring forth from the eyes, the ears, and the nose. White froth flowed from the slightly open mouth. Maximus stared, half-terrified, half-fascinated at the unexpected results of his experiment.

It was McCoy who recovered from the shock most quickly: he quickly rushed to the vitals monitors and gasped when he saw the neurological patterns. "It's a complete blank. He's brain dead."

McCoy roared, and lunged at Maximus with terrifying agility, spearing him squarely and pinning him against the glass wall. He scrounged the man up by the throat and slammed him against the wall, which cracked slightly against the pressure.

"You have turned him into a vegetable, you lunatic! Do you have any idea of what you have done?!"

"Well, he isn't any worse off than I found him," Maximus spat back, a stream of blood snaking down one nostril.

Crystal looked to Tony to quell the unrest, but she found him still overcome with shock. She took it upon herself to do the deed, raising a gust of wind to separate McCoy from Maximus.

Tony found his resolve not long after. He calmed McCoy down and put the man to run a battery of tests to follow up on Raine's condition. But he himself knew that it was fruitless.

He looked beyond the glass walls, and towards the three women outside. Carol was standing erect, utterly crestfallen. The compartment was soundproof, but she had seen the commotion nonetheless.

Tony ran a hand down his face and hung his head.

What was he going to tell her?

"Wait…" Maximus said suddenly, fetching his touch pad from the floor. "But that's just not possible,"

"What are you talking about?" Tony asked. It was difficult to hide his anger.

Maximus told him. Tony looked at the man incredulously. The Guardians could have possessed all the advanced technology in the world, but what he had just heard sounded ridiculously like science fiction. Hell, it was straight up magic. Like Maximus had said, it wasn't possible.

Yet was it really that hard to believe?

#####

A great drumming sound assaulted his hearing. Thump Thump Thump. He realised that it was his own heartbeat, getting all the more faster as life faded from his body. The pressure pushed at him from all sides, crushing him into pulp like a garbage compactor. The darkness remained, the only constant in this tragedy. Soon, it would be all he had left.

It was getting hard to breathe. The water filled up his lungs, threatening to pop them like a cherry. His skull felt as though it was expanding, about to break apart from such an exertion. His heartbeat got faster. Thumpa Thumpa Thump.

It would be over soon.

He didn't know why this was happening to him, and he couldn't do anything about it. But at least, it would be over soon.

But then, he felt something grasp his arms; it was a terrible grip, as though exerted through a giant wrench. It pulled on him, and his body complied, shooting upwards like a ragdoll.

The pressure decreased exponentially. His head cleared, and the water flushed out of his ears and nose and mouth. His eyes had been shut tight; he opened them, and saw a overriding expanse of whiteness, getting closer and closer. Soon, it enveloped his sight completely.

Raine Zin bolted upwards, his eyes shot open. He tried to move his limbs, but there was a strange aching in them.

He turned his head in an arc, getting a good look at his surroundings. It was vast, whatever it was. It was also man-made; but Raine doubted that men could build something so alien, so intricately designed as what he was seeing.

He didn't know where he was, and how he had got there. But he was alive. And that was what mattered the most at the moment.

The rest would have to wait for later.


End file.
